Australia: Part Deux

First off, I am sorry for the lack of posts. Its been just over a month. The main reason I haven't been posting is the fact that I have been working a TON and the internet is so unbearably minimal that it is tough to find time/money.

Work has been good. The restaurant is the same as always, but the catering side of work has gotten much more interesting. Recently, I have been working a lot of weddings and, luckily, I have been allocated to the bartender position. Or, as I like to call it, the occasional-beer opener/wine-pourer-and-drinker-of-free-alcohol-while-crouching-beneath-the-bar...tender.

It is an absolute blast working weddings. They are usually outside of Melbourne. For instance, three weeks ago, Riley and I worked a wedding in Myrtleford, a rural town famous for its vineyards. This particular wedding was on top of a, well I won't call it a mountain, but certainly a large hill. The family owned the largest vineyard in Myrtleford. It started out somewhat stressful and boring while we were serving food, but once Riley and I got behind our bar, it got weird. In a good way. The guests are always drunk and encourage you to talk to them and have a drink or six. The end of the night, however, was the highlight.

As we were driving back to our accommodation, we saw a wild kangaroo hoping along the side of the road as they tend to do. Then, one of the most ridiculous things I have ever witnessed in a car occurred. We were just cruising along the road and, all of the sudden, an OWL appeared in our headlights. Now, I can't speak for the driver, but I am assuming he thought:

Ok...Owls seem like smart creatures.
In most cartoon depictions, they are wearing a hat that suggests that graduated from some sort of higher education and they wear monocles.
This little creature should know to get out of the way of a massive amount of twisted steel and sex appeal

This seems like a fair assumption, unfortunately the owl's thought process must have been something to the effect of:

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a....

BAM!

Yes, I witnessed a carrier van demolish some sort of Australian Owl. Awesome. Weird. Sad?

Anyway, last week, Riley and I ticked off another box of things we need to do in Australia: Surfing.

Unfortunately the check in the box is accompanied by a minus sign.

We spent a night outside of Melbourne at one of friends from work's beach house. Luckily, she had a couple of surf boards. We made it our mission, despite it being cold and windy (relatively speaking, suckers) and not having a wetsuit or rash guard, to successfully surf. Come on...I've seen Blue Crush and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I can do that!

Unfortunately it wasn't quite that easy. The first thing I realized was that there is a reason that no good surfers have chest hair. Wax from the board and a forest of man fur mix about as well as box wine and late night kebabs. The pain was nearly unbearable, but it couldn't quell our spirits.

The concept of surfing seems simple: See a big wave, start paddling to gain momentum, catch the wave, pop up, look sweet, grow out blonde hair, buy shell based necklace, denounce footwear, forget proper english, burn out.

Not quite that easy. I "caught" plenty of mondo swells, but the process of paddling was exhausting and standing up was completely out of the question. Very very difficult. I will be the first one to tell you, and so will anyone who has seen me attempt to ride a skatebaord, that boardsports are not my forte (too lazy to put an accent on that). A couple of times, I get semi-close and Riley got very close, but at the end of the 1.5 hour session we were both dejected and exhausted, so we decided to pack it, defeated by Poseidon. Whatever, thats what boats are for.

As of now, we are still in the same apartment. Last night two of our roommates left for New Zealand. Fortunately, we found two immediate replacements. Today, two swedish girls moved in. Cheers. They have been cleaning all day. Benefits of living with girls I guess. The whole speaking in...Swedish?...might get annoying, but luckily they speak English well.

On a completely unrelated note: I am going to steal an idea from an Australian bar called Trader Bar. I really hope they don't already have this in the states...

The concept is a bar that operates like the stock market. Each beer/cocktail starts out at a certain price. Based on how many people are purchasing the drink, the price will rise and fall. Every now and then, however, the market will "crash" and all of the drinks will be a dollar or so. Classic idea.

Non-lax interested people can tune out now. Or pretend you understand/care.

Congrats to the Michigan Lax boys on a tight one against ASU and good luck vs BYU. Our lacrosse has started and it has been interesting. The guys are, for the most part, good athletes that have learned to play...solid lacrosse. They aren't bad, but they have very little theoretical knowledge of the game. The offense is as follows:

6 offensive players, no specific positions. One person at X and one at "the point." Everyone else, run around and set picks. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. It is really painful. The odd thing is, they do it pretty well because they have been playing together for years. It is just extremely different that what we learned at Michigan. We had/have plenty of talent at Michigan, no doubt about that, but our last two seasons were successful because we were extraordinarily disciplined and everyone was on the same page and played within themselves. Not the case here. We will just have to adjust I suppose. At least the guys are a cool group so once our Anglo-friends leave, we will have a new groups of friends.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of updates. I bought a pre-paid mobile broadband card. It is about as slow as my progress in surfing, but it will have to do for now.

Over and Out.