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.