Our Swim in the Harbour on NYE

Well hello folks... I thought I'd fill you in on something I'm sure you were all wondering about when Blindo wrote about it earlier. Yes - We (Skinner, Linder, and I) swam in the harbour right outside of Taylor's work. The following is a series of photos taken by Erin, photographer extraordinaire.

First up is a picture of us in preparation... the story goes like this. I said we should swim in the harbour and Skinner said he'd do it if I could convince Linder to do it. It didn't take all that long to convince him and before you knew it we were in our skivvies ready to take the plunge. Little did we know the dangers that were awaiting us.




Next up is us post-jump. The water wasn't all that cold, but apparently it was full of sharks, oil, boats, and all other sorts of stuff that will most likely kill us in an instant or an hour (I'll explain this claim of dangerous stuff in a later picture).





Here we are posing for a glamour shot in the water - showcasing our multitasking capabilities. All of us can smile and not drown at the same time, all of us except for Lindberg, who tried to smile and tread at the same time and as evidenced by this picture, well he couldn't do it. He's on his way to the depths.





Here you can see Taylor hard at work, admiring the scenery and really soaking it all in. Later that night we'd find out that a manager came up to him and asked, "are those your friends in the Harbour? Because they should probably get out of there... there's oil in there and gas and stuff." Taylor said, "I don't think they care..." Then 2 minutes later another worker came over and asked, "Hey Taylor, are those your friends in there? Because you should tell them to get out because there are a lot of sharks in the harbour." Taylor responded, "I don't think they care..." 5 Minutes later (after we had gotten out and were drying off), Taylor's main manager asked Taylor, "Are those your friends, because you shouldn't tell anyone they are. Also can you please ask them to leave from right out front of our restaurant? Thanks." Taylor replied, "Heck Yeah those are my friends! They can dry off wherever they want... and if you kick them out, I QUIT!" His manager apologized and gave T a raise on the spot. That's the story.





Now in the next shot you see linderbinder first out of the water after his close-call with drowning. He decided to stick to swimming and not smiling to get himself to the edge.





Last but not least... the money shot. The four boys all together before we actually were escorted out of the area. Oh what a day.





And that's what happened people. Now you know - and knowing is half the battle. Keep it real and keep on reading. We love you and miss you.

- Jesse "fights off oil-soaked sharks for a living" Meredith

More on Melbourne

Hey everyone out there. Jesse did an excellent job of documenting our trip to Melbourne but I wanted to add a couple things and show off some more pics.

Melbourne did feel completely different than Sydney. Much more laid back and pleasant. I would say the culture factor was much larger. I feel like people don't live in Sydney so much as pass through or visit briefly (we aren't helping to change this stereotype) so its more difficult for Sydney to develop a special feel when there is no consistency with the people. Whereas Melbourne is more distinct. I don't know how to better explain it. The bars were amazing. The people were friendly and helpful. There seemed to be so many more things to do even though the city was much smaller. Also they do have Nando's which is really pretty great. Here is the bird they gave me when I ordered my food.



Also as Jesse said, Melbourne's sense of architecture and art was pretty amusing. Here is the sculpture out in front of the library (pretty close to where the old library sunk into the sidewalk)


It appears to be some sort of gladiator dueling a dragon. I loved it. If anyone can discover what sort of mythical epic or historical story this piece of art is depicting I will give you a prize. Anyways Jesse's timeline of Melbourne was pretty accurate. I noticed a couple events got switched in their order of occurrence but it really doesn't change the overall feeling of the trip. So I won't spend my time correcting as much as elaborating on the story he told.

Our first day in Melbourne was highlighted by an excellent open air market. Aisles and aisles of useless chattel (word of the day) including this rack of "slightly imperfect" clothing.



It's hard to tell from the pictures but if I had one word to describe the shorts and shirt we are displaying it would be imperfect. I love honest advertising.

Then here is a nice pic I wanted to highlight of Skinner eating his salad at the park. Skinner is being vegan these days which we totally respect but sometimes its pretty funny like in this picture.



The rest of that day was pretty fun. The casino was really pretty massive. We got lost a number of times and we didn't even have access to all the parts of the casino (members only) and didn't really explore anything but the first floor of it.

Moving on to the second night and the pub crawl. Jesse mentioned most of these highlights so i am just going to remention them again.



Jesse didn't really like the Misty Bitch Bar all that much but I thought it was ok. The problem was we got there pretty early in the night and we made up 80% of the people in the bar so I would give the place another chance when there are more people around that adds a little more atmosphere to the place. Anyways while the Misty Bitch drink was definitely the most exotic, I selected a local beer that is brewed in Melbourne called Cricketers Arms Lager. I thought it was a great beer though all beers pretty much taste the same to me. Anyways here are the two aforementioned drinks.



Velvet carpet on the walls with weird art. Another fun place. Check out the rest of my pics with the link on the right hand column on this bar to see Jesse and Erin mesmerized by the carpet on the walls. Also check out the link to the pics cuz there are lots of new pics from the Blue Mountains and Cricket and Melbourne.



Moving on here is the infamous Croft Institute mad scientist bar. This is the only really decent photo I took of the place. The lighting was so dark and spooky it was difficult to get good pics of the whole place, but here you can see a lot of the crazy decorations.


Finally here is a shot from floor 88 of the Skydeck Tower.



There were some gorgeous views from up there. We did this little ride where they put you in this glass box room and then the room slides out of the building so you are standing in this box and looking down and you can see the city. They try really hard to freak you out and give you vertigo by shaking the box a little as they are moving it out of the building and they play sounds of glass cracking too. But the glass was all scratched up under our feet (even though they made us wear little booties so we wouldn't scratch it anymore) so it didn't feel like there was nothing between you and falling 90 floors. At least thats what I thought. There was a lady that went out in the box with us that felt quite a bit differently. The glass under our feet had small little steel bars crisscrossing through to add support and this lady refused to step on the actual glass and was tiptoeing all around on the small little steel parts. I really wanted to start jumping up and down in the glass box but I felt like there was a good chance I could give that lady a for reals heart attack. So thats Melbourne in a nutshell. I think we have mostly caught up our blog to our lives now minus a couple small things here and there. Its good to be back in the blogging world. Its almost Inauguration Day and LOST is back and Pittsburgh is going to the Superbowl. Life is good.

B

Mel-buhn

-->don't forget to click on the picture thumbnails to get a bigger view<--

That’s how they say it here… Melbourne, that is, just in case you were wondering. If you weren’t wondering… at least you know now. You never know when somebody will be talking about it and you will be able to understand them even if they are Australian. Brisbane, similarly, is pronounced briz-bihn and that is where Chandrodeo clown (aka Chansauce aka Chandra) currently is. She flew out Saturday afternoon and she is staying with a friend’s ex-boyfriend for the week up in the Gold Coast/Brisbane area. It should be wonderfully nice there for her and we’re all excited to see pics and hear some excellent travel info about the place when she returns.

Before you get into this particular bloggerton... please note it is a long and somewhat in depth recount of our time in Melbourne, so brace yourselves for a long and winding read.

Ok folks – this here blog is going to be built around our trip to the city of Melbourne. Just to clarify, Melbourne is ‘the other’ city in Australia. Essentially you can split Australia into either Sydneysiders or Melbournites (I made up that second term) as this is where half the population of the nation lives. Melbourne is quite different from Sydney in a lot of ways, most notably the laid back atmosphere of everything and the plethora of Nando’s Restaurants everywhere. There are next to none here in Sydney, but Nando’s chicken shack is like the McDonald’s/Starbucks of Melbourne. You see one, if not six, on every block of every street. Nando’s, incidentally, is Skinner’s favorite place ever and he ate there 7 meals in a row.

Other fun things about Melbourne are the simply silly structures and architectural designs everywhere. It honestly looks like somebody gave Picasso a crayon and told him to draw a building in certain cases. Ridiculous colors contrasted with exotic shapes and textures are a staple of all things Melbourne. Sometime buildings, in this case the old Library, just sink into the ground for no apparent reason. It is truly the counter-culture version of Sydney. We all loved it.

And now I will walk you through our days in Melbourne with exact times for everything we did (based completely on my memory, so don’t fault me for some mistakes).

Tuesday January 6th, 2009

4:47am – I awake to the sounds of birds chirping
4:48am – I run around shaking everyone awake and apologize to Taylor for waking him up (Taylor couldn’t come with us due to his rigorous working schedule)
5:24am – Everyone boards the 5:21 bus and heads towards the train station
6:17am – We get to the airport in plenty of time for our 7:00am departure
6:18am – I see the mile-long line and worry we might not make our flight
6:21am – yadda yadda yadda… we’re all through security [note that they don’t even check ID ever… for anyone… whatsoever… or water bottles]
8:15am – land in Melbourne only to find out we are 50km outside of Melbourne CBD in some random place called Avalon
8:30am – board a bus to ‘Real Melbourne’ after paying $20 for a bus pass… bull crap
11:00am – find a hostel we’re content with
11:01am – book said hostel
11:02am – find out we can’t check into our rooms until 2:00pm
11:03am – head out on the tizzown and try to find some food
11:15am – hit up a local market that is packed with all sorts of goodies – everything from flags and bandanas to salt shakers and Asian massages
12:30pm – eat at a delicious foodcourt and wonder what’s up next for us… because we’re so tired we need a nap before venturing out anywhere
1:00pm – go to an awesome Spanish/Mexican restaurant and share margaritas
1:37pm – get to the hostel and beg them to let us check in, which they do
1:41pm – asleep in our room
1:57pm – everyone begins taking off more and more clothes as we realize our room on the 6th floor is quite possibly the hottest room in the southern hemisphere at that moment
4:00pm – awake and excited to see the city
4:30pm – after seeing some sights and finding the Library (key for internet access and central location) we’re in the park for a nice little picnic and some ball throwing games
7:30pm – food/showers/primping/gaming/etc. readying ourselves for a night of fun in Melbourne
10:00pm – Fun bar with nice atmosphere and cold beer called the Bear Brass
11:00pm – live music at an awesome Irish Pub called PJ Obrien’s
11:17pm – singing along with the lone acoustic guitarist guy while sipping on some Strongbow Cider (it’s Strongbow season here in Australia)
11:59pm – last song for the man and we’re moving on
12:07am – Skinner is headed home because he’s got a bit of a cold and the other 4 (Me, Erin, Blindo, Chandra) are headed to check out the largest Casino in the southern Hemishpere
1:30am – Erin and I head home after losing a little bit of money while playing roulette (Erin did the coaching... I did the playing and losing)
2:45am (or thereabouts) – everyone is back and asleep for a couple hours until we awake minutes later because we are again sweating to death.


Wednesday January 7th, 2009

9:41am – Alarm goes off and everyone has to get up and out by 10am checkout
10:17am – The search for our next hostel begins
11:30am – The search for our next hostel ends with a hotel-ish sort of place that has air conditioning
11:31am – Air conditioner is turned on full-blast
11:58am – out on the town and first-time Nando’s eating for many of us
12:34pm – checking out various buildings and possibilities for entertainment and ended up hanging out in the hustling/bustling central train station with lots of shops and fun decorations as evidenced by the great photography of Erin and her fancy camera features.
1:27pm – decided not to see Bolt 3D in the theatre and opted for outdoor sight-seeing instead
3:45pm – Erin, Skinner and I all take a nap in preparation for the ‘Marvelous Melbourne Pub Crawl’
5:30pm – MMPC begins with the Bear Brass (same place from the night before but tonight they have really cheap pizza + Stella beer combo)
6:00pm – Skinner and I struggle trying to find the result of the cricket match we had attended two days earlier (it had just ended and was quite close in the end. Apparently it came down to the last couple of overs and a dude that had gotten injured earlier in the match [with a broken knuckle] had to return to bat again if the South Africans were to have a chance to tie. He fended off the ball for 17 agonizing bowls, but in the end failed to protect the wicket, which was ultimately the final wicket for Australia. In simpler terms – Australia won after 5 days instead of tying.)
6:51pm – e fiftyfive, the second stop on the MMPC, lives up to the hype of Melbourne’s pubs being fun and hard to find. We stayed at this place for a while simply because the beer was cheap and we had all night to hit all the rest of the places. Some of the highlights of this place were the dirt-cheap decorations and couches littering the establishment, the oldschool videogame console, which we played, Erin moving her glass away as I poured her a beer, which resulted in beer spilled on her jeans at only our second stop of the night, and a nice bartender with a great afro.
7:59pm – the bar formerly known as 6Links and formerly active, but currently closed down due to numerous noise complaints… bummer, we're moving on.
8:03pm – Misty (bar #3)… but we didn’t quite make it in until well after 8pm because this place was down the absolute coolest alley I’ve ever seen. It is probably one of the most famous streets in Melbourne because it is loaded with incredible graffiti from street to roof. Check the pics.


The bar ended up being somewhat of a letdown after the amazing alley we traveled through to get there. The highlight of the bar was probably the ‘Misty Bitch’, which is the cocktail they are famous for. Chandra was the only one brave enough to try it and it was essentially an inversion of a Sour Patch Kid (i.e. it was sweet at first and then very sour at the end).
8:42pm – Loop, another bar that either didn’t exist or we couldn’t find, was passed up for a place called the Spleen. It was kind of a grungy place to be (hence the name Spleen), but Skinner utilized his time lapse camera setting on Lindy as he drank a beer.
9:08pm – Carlton Hotel Bar (stop #5) was up next. This place also had some just plain silly decorations. Velvet carpet on the walls and life-sized Ostriches were my favorite parts.
9:49pm – The Lounge… well we entered only to find that the downstairs bar was closing but that the upstairs dance club was very much open so we headed upstairs to investigate. After finding out it was a $5-10 cover we decided to keep moving before we lost any steam on our adventurous night.
10:06pm – Next we’re walking through Chinatown trying to find an alley that we are supposed to head down to find the 7th place we’re scheduled to hit. After walking up and down the street for about 10 minutes, I spot the alley we are looking for and warily head in that direction. I'm fairly certain it has to be incorrect so I don't get my hopes up. As the alley gets darker and scarier every step I take, I make a turn only to find that the next section of alley is even darker and scarier. People are sitting in the shadows (turns out they worked in a restaurant and were on a break), but it was one of the creepier experiences in Melbourne. Finally at the end of the alley there is a dimly lit doorway with ‘Croft Institute’ hastily painted over the top. Now in order to picture this right just imagine a high school chemistry lab room from the 80’s and basically you have the Croft Institue. It was the single coolest place I’d ever been in and I felt so privileged to be there. They had specialty cocktails with names like ‘The Antidote’ and ‘Formula 57’. The bartender, who turned out to be an extremely friendly and helpful individual, informed us that shots are normally served out of plastic syringes but that they were currently out of stock… due for a shipment the following day. Erin and Chandra chatted it up with bartender boy as the Brians and I went upstairs to check out the ‘Departments of Male and Female Hygiene’ as they are so aptly named at the Croft Institute. They were even crazier than downstairs and even included a gurney in the women’s room, which we found out several minutes later when Erin and Chandra investigated for themselves. This was by far the coolest pub any of us have ever, and possibly will ever be in. I wish I had pictures, but as I said before I only have access to Erin's and My pics and neither of us took pictures there. Skinner took a bunch, but he hasn't posted his yet.
11:17pm – St. Jerome’s, stop #8, was less of a pub and more of a house that served beer and had a DJ in the backyard/alley. There we met a crazy man from Burma who spoke slurred English and laughed after everything he said. We just kept smiling and nodding to keep him happy even though we had no idea what he was saying.
11:46pm – after some aimless wandering and searching out for other bars, we decided to make a pitstop at McDonalds for some late-night grub and a bathroom break. Erin warned me as I entered the bathroom that there had been a food fight of some sort and from the looks of things in that bathroom, she was right.
12:13am – We contemplated entering a bar with fantastic live music emanating from the core, but were dissuaded by the bouncer who informed us that it was $20 to get in and that they would be closing up shop within a half hour or so.
12:24am – The night winding down and everyone tired from a wonderful night of wandering, eating, drinking, watching, and seeing… we headed home for a somewhat early night.
12:34am – Attempting to fall asleep in sub-arctic temperatures requires the ability to regulate core temperature at will, which I don't possess… so instead I slept in my corduroy pants and two shirts to try and stay warm. I’m not sure whether I woke up more from the freezing cold that night or that blistering heat the night before, but they were both interesting experiences I am not keen to relive any time soon.


Thursday January 8th, 2009
9:41am – Alarms again to get us up and out by 10am
10:21am – Library research and Nando’s prepares us for the day
11:33am – Various sight-seeing activities headed off by our quest for more graffiti art, of which there was plenty.
1:47pm – Lunch at a delicious little café (Skinny liked it so much he bought two of the exact same sandwich and saved one for later).
2:39pm – Federation square and walking along the river
3:30pm – splitting the group up while half of us went to the Casino to investigate that further and the other half went to the Eureka Skydeck tower to visit the 88th floor views. Skinner played blackjack against a dealer who I am convinced had to be dealing off the bottom of the deck or something… because he was able to attain a score of no less than 20 and no more than 21 nearly every single time regardless of what he was dealt. It was a fun and lazy afternoon walking around and admiring everything the city had to offer.
6:00pm – meeting up at the bus station to catch our bus to the airport
8:15pm – Take-off for Sydney.
10:49pm – We’re back in the good old house in Rose Bay… waiting for Taylor to come home from work so we could tell him all the fun stories.


And there you have it folks… that was our time in Melbourne in a Nutshell. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed reliving it while writing. Love you all.

Jesse “carpal tunnel” Meredith

Artsy Fartsy

Alright… So Linder Binder covered a great deal of what has happened over the past couple weeks, but not everything. Don’t you go thinking for a second that you’re not going to hear from the other half of the long-standing bloggers from way back when [I’m talking about myself there]. Skinner claimed he was going to write a guest blog during his stint down under, but as you can see – nobody posted whatsoever during the time he was here. So, I guess not. Be that as it may, I’ll try to fill you in on other interesting happenings whilst Brian Fitzgerald Skinner was in our presence (note – he’s always in our hearts and thoughts, but rarely in our location).

Shortly after his arrival… Skinner busted out his new camera and much of the rest of his trip was consumed with utilizing every single feature it possessed, which were quite numerous. Anyway, it got everyone thinking about what their cameras could do and soon everyone was doing time lapse photography, hi-speed action shots, color warping and matching, and timer settings. Needless to say, we’ve got about a thousand pictures ranging from the beautiful to the bizarre and I’ve decided that for the rest of this post I’m just going to post a few pictures that used some sort of nifty feature and give you a brief explanation.


This first one may not look special at all… and alone by itself, it really isn’t. Except for the dermatologist’s tongue about to get bitten off – it’s pretty standard. The fun part comes in when you get to see the sequence because this picture is part of 6 or 7 more that make up a collage of Erin and Brian jumping in the sand. This was when I figured out my hi-speed action setting that takes 10 or so pictures a second and I decided to make them jump up and down to check it out. I think it’d be fun to print out a bunch of those pictures and make them into one of those flip-books that creates a moving picture.



The description for the above picture is two-fold. You’ll notice that the only color that shines through is yellow. Before you ask – Yes, Brian and I are both wearing almost-identical yellow shirts. We bought them together in Melbourne and wore them the rest of the day, but it wasn’t totally on purpose. I had initially bought a reddish-orange one that was an XL but when I tried it on in the bathroom it was far too tight. I attempted to return it and was informed I could only substitute it for something else… so that’s where you get me in the yellow shirt. That’s the first part of the description and the second is that both Erin’s and bSkinny’s cameras have a nifty setting that allows you to pick only one color to show up. It looks really sweet most of the time and especially when you are in Melbourne with fantastic graffiti everywhere. When I write a blog about Melbourne, I’ll include more pics and stories than you can shake a stick at, but for now this will just serve as something to whet your appetite. Two-part description of above picture = complete.

I thought I was going to have a lot more firepower* to use in this blog, but I just remembered Skinner’s camera was the one with all the nifty styles of pics and I don’t have access to them just yet. I’ll let you know once he posts them somewhere so I can get them up on here maybe for your viewing pleasure.

*firepower = stylized pictures

I realize this is a fairly incomplete blog post and I apologize for that, but I’m feeling overwhelmed at the moment trying to come up with a way to bring everything from the past 3 weeks together into a coherent blog. I don’t see it happening so the next two or three blogs will probably be somewhat nonsensical. In the end, however, I expect them to mesh together to form something far greater than the sum of all the parts.

Please be patient with us as we work to give you guys what you love… US!

Jesse “trying to be way too artsy for his own good” Meredith

Test Cricket

On the 5^th of Jan the guys spent the day at the Sydney Cricket Grounds to watch an epic day three of a cricket match between Australia and South Africa. Test cricket is a five day event marathon and on the third day we got to see wickets 4 through 10 of South Africa's first innings plus a couple overs of Australia batting. Highlights of the actual cricket were few and far between as Test Cricket is a pretty slow game with a lot of strategy and not too much excitement. The biggest moment of the day was probably when Australia was fielding a grounder and threw out South Africa as they tried to stretch a single into a double. It was an amazing throw as the fielder turn and threw and nailed the stumps without really looking at where he was throwing. It was pretty amazing. But outside of the actual game there were lots of fun things going on. We talked to a number of other people in the stands and got a lot of insight into the game that we wouldn't have picked up on otherwise. There was an awesome kid Angus

who we really enjoyed hanging out with. He knew everything about cricket and the teams. Taylor volunteered to finish his beer if Angus could name every Aussie on the field. Taylor was impressed but not too pleased when Angus rattled off all 11.

He was a great kid. Also during the lunch break (its awesome that a sport has a break in the middle of the day for lunch) a bunch of little pee wee little league cricketeer teams came out and played a ton of different little games.

Definitely more entertaining than the actual game there were balls flying everywhere and no one knew what was going on. We picked up on the name of a few kids playing near where we were sitting by listening to their parents in the stands cheering. One kid named Scottie we especially enjoyed rooting for. He had no idea how we knew who he was or why we were going crazy every time he did anything. So it was a great day of sun and sports and beer with the guys.

After a long day in the scorching heat we decided to stop by Redleaf Pool on the way home.

Then it was time to rest up for our trip to Melbourne! But Jesse or I will cover that in another post.

New Years

Happy New Years everyone! Ok we are already a few weeks into the ought 9 or whatever we are calling it these days, but since The Rescuers went into a lengthy period of radio silence since ought 8 we have some recapping to do. So New Years was quite the event here in Sydney. As best I can remember we were all up and ready to go for New Years eve by 11am.

We went downtown and visited some bars and reflected on this last year. Taylor had to go to work so we walked him over to his hotel on the water right across from the opera house. Once there someone (I think Jesse) had the bright idea to jump in the water right outside the hotel. Somehow this felt like a great idea so the three of us stripped down to our undies and took a little dip in the water by the docks. This was all pretty disconcerting to everyone in the hotel's restaurant except for Taylor. Other employees figured out pretty quickly that we were friend's of Taylor as we were doing everything we could to embarrass him. Other employees showed concern by telling Taylor that it was not safe at all for us to be swimming because of all the oil in the harbor. Taylor's response: “I don't think they care”. Someone else told Taylor that there was risk of being attacked by sharks. Taylor's response: “Ok, be reasonable.” Eventually a manager asked Taylor to come out to ask us to go jump in the water somewhere else besides right in front of their restaurant. So T came out and said hi and took a couple pictures with us (I wish I had one of those pics but you will have to look to Skins or Jessem or Emay or someone else for those.) After that we hit up a few more bars and generally partied around Sydney til around sunset. Later that night we all made our way down to Duff Reserve, a tiny little green park right on the edge of the water pretty close to where we live in Rose Bay. From that point you can see much of the harbor including the bridge. Some fireworks went off at 9 (for families and kids who can't stay up to midnight) and we all ooed and ahhed from there. Unfortunately Duff Reserve isn't much of a secret and the tiny area had 50 some odd people packed in pretty tightly. Everyone trying to find space for their own little picnic and viewing area. After the 9 oclock show, Skinner, Amit, and I

decided we didn't want to spend the rest of the night packed like sardines here so we left to go find adventures downtown. After a quick little taxi ride downtown we wandered into the Botanical Gardens and talked to random people. There was a nice frenchman there giving us shots of vodka I believe. He thoroughly enjoyed providing the shots by pouring them into the cap of the handle and we thoroughly enjoyed the shots. But we didn't have much of a view point of the bridge from there so we continued walking. Eventually we found ourselves at the rocks more or less under the bridge. The fireworks

were amazing from the vantage point but it took just about forever to get back home. One crazy new years.

Blue Mountains and Australian Open

Welcome back! Ok you didn't go anywhere. It was us that left. We apologize. We had a lot going on the last few weeks. But no excuses. We are going to have to work really hard to get you up to date but I think we are up to the challenge. Lets see where we left you and we will go from there.

Ok it looks like we fell off right before new years right when skinner showed up. Brian Skinner showed up a couple days before New Years and left a couple days ago. For those of you who don't know who BS is, he played volleyball with Jesse and I at Stanford and is now working for a software company in Palo Alto. He demanded adventures and mayhem and activities galore out of us so that's what we gave him. A couple days after New Years, Chandra Morris or Rodeo as we like to call her flew in to visit us for a whole month! Rodeo is friends with Jesse and Erin from their summer in Arizona. So once those two showed up, it all pretty much went downhill from there. I am going to talk about the last couple days first because I remember those the best and then backtrack as best I can from there. Here are the last couple days of activities out in Oz.

Blue Mountains

On the 13^th of 2009 I had a full day off work so Chandra and I (everyone else had to work) made a little day trip out to the Blue Mountains for some hiking. We were up by 7:30 to get out to the Blue Mountains by around 11. We hiked for about 5 hours and covered 10-15 kilometers. It was a perfect day for a hike. Blue skies all day but not sweltering (the next day when we went to the Australian Open and it was unbelievably hot). We started at the Three Sisters

and Echo Point and hiked along the Prince Henry Cliff Walk. There were almost too many gorgeous lookouts along the way.

Eventually we had to pass over many of the views or we wouldn't get back to civilization before nightfall. We got out to the Leura Cascades and took a little dip in the water.

From there we went down into the Leura Forest. To get from the Cascades to the Forest we descended down hundreds and hundreds of stairs. Once we got to the bottom it was very rainforesty and beautiful.

After that we hiked through more regular forest and ended our hike going up the Giant Stairway, 900 steps of calf killing work. We felt it was a little generous to call it a stairway. It felt more like a ladder it was so steep. Exhausted after 5 hours of wanderings, we grabbed some Subway (only restaurant still open at 6pm in the tiny little town) and a bottle of wine. We hopped back on the train and had a great 2 hour ride home with our wine.

To cap off the day we took a taxi home from the Edgecliff train station where we found $50 on the back seat of the cab. All in all it was a pretty great day.

Australian Open

On the 14^th of 2009 we went to the Olympic Park in Sydney to watch some excellent tennis. Like I said before, it was sooooo hot outside. We sat in the shade for most of the day and have no idea how the players managed to go on out in the sun all day.

We got to see Djokovic dismantle his opponent in straight sets and then we watched a very excellent match between Lleyton Hewitt and Jano Tiperavich. Jano is Serbian and Lleyton is Australian. There was a huge Serbian contingent in the arena to watch Djokovic and they all hung around to see Tiperavich so the atmosphere got a bit hostile when the Australia v Serbia match got pretty close. The Serbian crowd was small but rowdy and the Aussies were more numerous and got pretty upset when Hewitt was losing early. At one point the Serbs started shouting “Look at the scoreboard”. Some old lady yelled in response “Look at your country!”. So it was a pretty entertaining match all around. Hewitt went down 5 games to 3 in the first set and came back to win 7-5. He went on to win the second set as well to the delight of the crowd. It felt like the Serbian crowd really only cared about seeing Djokovic win so they left happy too. It was the first time I have ever been to a real professional tennis match and I enjoyed it a lot even though I was falling asleep at times from being still exhausted from the day before in the Blue Mountains. All the rules about being quiet during points and not being allowed to walk around during games. I didn't realize tennis was so civilized. I didn't really care for it too much. I think the players could focus and perform just as well even with the crowd cheering during the point. But what do I know.

Anyways thats it for the last couple days. Hopefully in the next week or two I can go back and recap our adventures for new years and the first couple weeks of 2009. It's good to be back!