shipping coals to Newcastle?
You’d think that 4 days would be enough to re-charge the batteries and be ready to face just three more weeks wouldn’t you? Well the reality is not quite that for me as the piercing early morning cries of Virg’n Mary manage to wake me up at 6.30 am no matter what time I go to bed. For some reason the exact note necessary to wrench me from a deep sleep or a REM moment can be perfectly vocalized by our two little furry companions. Apart from that one small drawback, we’ve had a great 4-day break.
On Thursday, Chad and Cathy decided to lay low this year, so we didn’t head to their place for Thanksgiving lunch. In stead, we had our usual ponderous weekend breakfast, quite decadent for a Thursday I decided (!), and raced down to the Shin Shin for a showing of “Cellular”. It was quite entertaining and it was refreshing to see a bit of new talent on the screen doing a good job, instead of dusting off Brad, Tom (Cruise or Hanks, take your pick) or some other ubiquitous Hollywood hero for another outing. As it was a weekday and early, we finally got in to our favored restaurant, Grazie, down there and enjoyed some wood fired pizzas and good coffee. We’d had many disappointments here, preferring not to queue up to get in on the weekend: it kind of takes all the pleasure away, don’t you think?
We then scootered down to the computer market, where I haggled just a bit and bought myself a new toy: a 20gb iPod! Suffice to say, the remainder of the day (and come to think of it, right up to now, pretty much!) was occupied charging pods, downloading songs, reading instructions etc. Cass, of course, is absolutely over the moon with this purchase and can see how I just HAD to have it and that it is, in fact, a necessity of life. She has willingly embraced all the hi-tech features of the pod and is just as ecstatic with it as I am (oh, I’ve just woken from a pleasant dream I was having). I do think, in all seriousness that Cassy has seen it is a very clever machine although I don’t know if she’s quite the right love in her heart!
Friday morning saw Ross and I attempt the great eastern seaboard run, leaving at 6am to link up with the aforementioned labyrinth of link ramps to expressway 1 before hurtling down there and taking a few fancy shortcuts which we worked out from the map to arrive bright, early and refreshed at the famed east coast beach of Dashi, or Honeymoon Bay. As you can probably guess, it didn’t quite work out the way we had planned! The expressway was great, but we got lost a couple of times finding the shortcut and when we did, the little line on the map didn’t quite match the narrow winding road up an amazingly tall mountain, mist and rain threatening our vision of precipitous cliffs and edges dropping away into murky valleys. After we got through this, we encountered a coast “highway” full of lumbering trucks and road gangs holding up the traffic. However, two hours later we arrived I the tiny town to gat our first glimpse of Dashi waves through heavy sea mist. We admired the local’s determination in always crossing the jagged rocky shoreline to enter the surf and managed to get a few little nicks and knocks on our way out. The swell was pretty solid and big booming lefts were pealing away in front of a little temple before closing out and smashing onto a shoreline of ugly big boulders. We were both a little tentative but managed to get a few waves before some near death experiences with the rocks and a deep chill brought on by our lack of wetsuits saw us call it a day. When we got out, we looked about 400 metres further down the coast to see a familiar sight that was just starting to peek through the lifting haze: is that the bridge and waves and black sandy beach we can see on the web cam? We had been surfing the wrong spot! After all that travel, we just had to go out again in the “real thing” so after stuffing our boards through windows and boot we chugged down the road to the main beach. It was pretty windswept and a howling offshore not only didn’t seem to smooth the water, but succeeded in blinding us with spray with every wave we took off on. After both entering the beginning stages of hypothermia, we decided to call it a day and an even longer drive home dumped us back in Tienmu at 3pm.
Cass went out for lunch to Pizza Rialto with Kristin and her baby on Friday afternoon and they did some minor clothes shopping on the way back. From all reports the company was great, the food delicious and the purchases excellent. Cass even minded a baby for a little while and enjoyed the experience! Ross and I were to meet again on Saturday to go to the Pillbox, which we did and we had a couple of hours of fair quality surf on Saturday afternoon. We arranged to meet later at the Indian round the corner for tea and we had a great dinner and a few beers. Our boss at school, Mark, was also there with his wife and some friends and we got the greatest surprise when we left: he had paid our bill! He really is just an amazing person, it really made our night. Ross and Ains came back for coffee and while Ross and I played with iPods etc, Cass and Ainsley had a good chat. We didn’t get to bed till quite late, so the piercing cries of the kitties were not appreciated this morning. We had a really lazy day today, I was loading more CDs onto the iPod and burning my Seinfeld DVDs and pausing to watch the Aussies whip the Poms in the league and read a few Herald clippings and my book. Using the royal “we” there was a bit of a mistake: Cass spent a lot of time marking papers!
Anyway, I’m falling asleep writing this as you probably are reading…..a bit of a report this one! See you in three weeks!!!