Sunny Side Up

Hello world! BLindy here. Its 11 in the pm on a quiet Monday evening right now. I am burnt to a crisp and exhausted but still pretty psyched for another full week ahead as long as the sun stays out. So despite my exhaustion and my constant need to reapply chapstick to my poor sunburned lips I will do my best to recount the events of the weekend for you without spontaneously combusting.

Saturday I rolled myself out of bed at some ungodly hour to stumble to the 10am bus down to Bondi Junction to catch another bus out to Tamarama beach. All this was extra difficult because Jesse couldn’t come because he had to work. Apparently he worked something like 50 hours this last week. Anyways, Jesse and I had visited Tamarama last weekend and were very impressed by the coziness of it all. Significantly smaller than Bondi or Manly, Tama is only a hundred meters across or so but is much deeper than that. What I mean is most beaches seem to run parallel to the water while Tamarama is more perpendicular. I think Jesse got a good pic of the place so he will have to post that soon. Anyways I got down there around 11 and played a couple solid hours of beach volleyball. The weather was pretty overcast until about 1230 when suddenly the sun came out and the wind stopped and it was a perfect day for the beach. The competition was mediocre overall. Mostly I played games with and against men twice my age. At one point we were playing a sort of 1 on 2 cutthroat where we took turns being without a partner on one side of the court. Pretty brutal. I also found myself in a game where I was the only guy and we were playing on a girls height net. Awkward game overall for me. I told my partner I had no desire to go all out on a net that was too low. Her response was she didn’t care how I played as long as we won. A statement I can always agree with. Anyways I got three or four games in that afternoon plus numerous dips in the ocean and a chapter or two read in my book (the haters from Zuma will be happy to hear that I still take extended breaks from the vball court to pretty much do nothing and be lazy.) So overall pretty perfect afternoon.

Moving on. On Sunday I got up even earlier! Like 8am! To go down to Manly beach to explore and check out the vball tournament going on down there. Once again I took the trip by myself as Jesse had to work and Erin was too exhausted from a long week and Taylor I think only found his way back home from an excellent Saturday night about half an hour before I woke up. All of us had been talking about getting out to see Manly for a while now but things always kept coming up so there was heaps of anticipation to finally get out to the Northern end of Sydney. The half hour ferry ride was beautiful and highlighted by a boat of santas flying by.

The ferry spits you out into a little shopping area in the middle of Manly with a little five minute walk down to the beach. I took my time wandering around getting acquainted. A couple odd things I found included a sign that said “Kiss n Ride”. I still can’t figure out what that means. Also in the middle of the downtown shopping mall area there was a church with its doors open and music drifting out into the walkway. I glanced in and found a praise band singing a song I knew from church back home. I thought that was pretty cool. Found my way to the beach and sat down for a while to watch the big Manly Beach Volleyball Tournament. I was pretty surprised to find only 10 courts or so of games going on. Even in the smaller tournaments back home there are usually more pools and more teams than that. And that was 10 courts for 4 different divisions (A and AA for Mens and Womens). But it looked like a lot of fun and a little more relaxed than the tournaments I have played in socal.

Wandering down to the end of the beach I hung out on some rocks jutting out into the water. A nice little bench seemed to be situated on the rocks far enough out to feel adventuresome but still removed enough from the water to be safe from the crashing waves. I sat there for a solid half hour just taking in the whole scene. I tried to document it somehow by taking pictures. Here is one that I really like.

With my polarized sunglasses on I could count five different shades of blue going from the water over the rocks to the water over the sand to the deeper water to the lower sky to the upper sky. I'm not quite the photographer yet to make that all apparent but i still like the picture. Anywho I took that picture a couple minutes before noticing a monster of a wave approaching with the potential to crash pretty big on the rocks around me. I had seen a couple waves shoot sprays of water 5 meters or so over my head and I expected even more from this one. I felt so foolish sitting there in wild anticipation and this outsider reached the rocks and blasted white water far above my head. That huge column of water proceeded to get caught up by the wind and fall directly on me and my backpack and all my belongings. I could only sit there and laugh for the next minute or two. Feeling pretty silly I glanced around at the sensible bystanders that had selected less precarious positions on the rocks and tried to figure out what to do with myself. Fortunately my camera is water proof and my phone and ipod and notebook were stashed deep enough in my backpack to avoid any real damage. I took it all as a sign to keep moving. Keep exploring.

When I got back to the vball tournament I met up with some friends I had met the day before at Tamarama. We hung out and watched some vball for a while and then went to play a little on our own. We started messing around with a volleyball and as usual that developed into an all inclusive game of 'lets see how many times we can keep the ball in the air before letting it fall'. We got up to I think 63 touches pretty quickly and of course everyone decided our mission was to break 100 touches. That mission seemed to take the rest of the afternoon and personally I wasn't too determined to complete it. We got to 94 once and since I was the only one counting and was counting mostly under my breath I thought about fudging the numbers and shouting out our success. But I didn't. 20 minutes later everyone was getting pretty sick of our game but still wouldn't quit. In the end we got up into the 90's and I was pretty nervous. 94, 95...dear god i hope this is it finally...I made an easy set for the 98th contact and thought how all the next person had to do was hit the ball anywhere in the air and I could run it down and touch it to reach 100. I'm still pretty dumbfounded by what happened next. As I set the ball perfectly to a girl two spots away from me in the circle, the girl next to me got some of her hair in her eyes apparently and started flailing around in a zombie or michael jackson thrilleresque way. While doing this she distracted and half ran into the girl I needed to make the 99th contact. While dealing with the zombie attack, the girl was only able to reach out and try to kick the ball up as it fell past her. I was helpless. Screened by the hair-in-the-face-girl I watched the ball graze off her foot to reach 99 and then fall to the sand. I apparently had hopelessly gone into a half dive towards where the ball fell and found myself lying on the sand with the ball in my arms. I rolled around in the sand awhile before explaining to the rest of them how close we had come. I then declared it quitting time. I took the ball away and went swimming. 99 is after all kinda respectable.

Monday morning I got back out to Tamarama by 10am to meet some people to play some more vball. We met out at the beach to find the whole thing flooded because of the huge surf. I don't know if its because of the full moon this weekend that is supposed to have been the largest in 15 years but the water had come all the way up the beach leaving a little lagoon where we intended to play. I talked with some people that had more experience in Sydney and they said that had only happened once or twice before in the last 20 years. Pretty crazy.

Without any volleyball, the four of us had a morning to kill. One of the girls (the competitive girl I had played with a couple days ago) and I decided to explore the cliffs around the beach to find a good spot to check out the ridiculous surf. We found an amazing little spot past Bronte beach on the side of the cliff. A little ways off the path along the cliff and down about 10 meters we found a little ledge with a sheer drop down to the rocks 30 meters below. The spot was pretty small and mostly sheltered from the wind with a little overhang to give some shade from the sun. It was pretty incredible to sit there and watch the crazy massive powerful ocean just hammer the beaches around us. We saw a couple guys out with a jetski and surfboard in tow. They looked to be trying to catch some of the massive waves without much success. From our point of view we couldn't tell if they ever caught one but I had tons of respect for them being out there either way.

The two of us hung out on that ledge for a while reading and talking and just admiring the view. She is a traveler from Sweden doing much the same thing we are: exploring Sydney and eventually Australia in general for around a year. The discussion ranged from IKEA to peanut butter and jelly. I have heard from a couple different people now that when Swedes get homesick, they go to IKEA and get swedish meatballs. I laughed on hearing this for a second time now in Australia. I expressed to her my overall dislike for IKEA (i've been in a store once or twice and just didn't like the experience). She responded to this as almost a personal affront. I had denounced her heritage, king and country and all that. I was very amused. Then somehow we established that the song I have sung so enthusiastically as far back as preschool (peanut, peanut butter...AND JELLY) was also known somewhat in Sweden. Pretty incredible I know. Anyways, overall it was another solid afternoon chock full of new experiences that I would say are pretty once-in-a-lifetimeish.

So thats about it for this weekend. I am slowly infiltrating the beach vball scene out here and hope to be accepted as one of them soon. Thanks for everyone who has been commenting and following all this. Anyone who read this post in one sitting especially should be commended. I am going back through this stuff and wonder who I am writing this for or who would want to read this. I am continually baffled that you guys put up with me. And for the rest of you who don't, enjoy the pictures. Those are for you. Also another note on the pictures: I usually have a lot more pictures than the ones I include in these posts and you can see all of them by clicking on the link on the side of the blog. Also I had to change the location of that link because of technical difficulties with my old computer dying. My photos will be separated more into folders by when they were taken. Here is the link to the folder of pictures from just this weekend.

Also I have been hearing about some growing pains as people learn how to comment on a blog or even learn what the word means (its like a noun thats also verb and probably adjective and adverb as well along. i would probably except it as any part of a sentence I think). I just want to say that I am proud of all of you. Its the thought that counts especially when your comment to the blog arrives as a personal email that is sent after only being half written. I will make sure to half respond and it will all get figured out. Alright combustion approaching. Happy Holidays and remember that the temperature in celsius here is greater than the temperature in farenheit where many of you live. HAHAHA.

B