Thursday, May 15, 2008

Heading home




This past week has flown by. Took Wednesday off so that Ryan and I could cruise around some of my favorite places here in Sydney. After a flat white from Barefoot we drove up to Whale Beach to take in the glorious day. After walking all around the beach we headed back into Manly, made a sandwich, and walked down to the Ferry. Our destination was Newtown, a little neighborhood outside of the CBD renown for it's restaurants, bars, and live music scene. We walked the streets, stopped in shops, had a nice ice cream, and then returned to Manly late in the afternoon.

On the ferry we decided to go for a quick paddle even though the waves were tiny. Turned out to be a good decision. After paddling out at Curl Curl, not even 5 minutes later a pod of dolphins slowly swam by us. Absolutely magical.

Last night we went to dinner at Bench to celebrate Morgan's 30th birthday. The fajitas were tasty, but we all gorged ourselves in a sickening manner. I am still suffering from over eating even today.

Tomorrow we leave for the States. Veronica and I are excited, it's gonna be a fun time.

A few more skydiving pics to laugh at. See you soon.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Kings Cross - Where the Wild Things Are

This weekend produced some seriously bizarre moments. Friday was our friend Amy’s 30th birthday, and we ventured into the Cross to celebrate. Ryan had heard plenty of stories regarding Kings Cross, but the events of the night superseded all the tales. Long story short, a little after midnight we walked across the street, descended some stairs, and entered a subterranean club called Candy’s to dance. Sydneysiders are equal to the English in their love of bad techno, and the group enjoyed dancing to the pulsating beats. Not being a giant fan of ‘doomf doomf’ music, I opted to take a seat and enjoy people watching with a bottle of beer with Ryan. Let me assure you, there is no better city for people watching than Sydney. The horrible, nay hideous, fashion statements parade around in unabashed and unbridled pride, and is quote simply astounding. Imagine the worst 80’s fashion that you can possibly conjure up in your mind, and mentally vomit the thoughts onto a person. Voila, you instantly have a Sydney fashionista. A rampant example would be Boy George’s flock of seagulls haircut, which many a young Sydney bloke (lemming) sport happily along with their ‘flouro’ t-shirt (neon, hideous neon). The girls are even more adventurous (train wrecks), rocking their unflattering shirt dresses which look like rejects from Cyndi Lauper’s closet. Quite simply, I was in heaven getting to see Ryan’s face rapidly change from disbelief to sheer pity and back again. Candy’s played one good song, Wham’s ‘Wake Me Up’, and I danced and profoundly imagined gasoline being poured all over myself. But the techno returned, and I reclaimed my seat to continue watching all the pathetic victims walk and dance by. Ryan returned from the bathroom with some crazy news, someone had been stabbed right outside the club. 5 minutes later, the lights turned on and the music was turned off, and police officers were talking to the DJ’s asking them if they could make an announcement asking for any witnesses. The lights went down and music began to play again, yet Ryan leaned close and said somewhat distractedly, ‘I can’t believe guys here wear white Keds!’ Nothing about the stabbing mind you, but rather what a wacked out and terrible idea it is for grown men to wear white Keds. My sentiments exactly! After 2 more songs, the lights again came on and we were informed the club was being closed for the night. Everyone was ushered out the back door and into a dirty alley. Our group walked around to the front of the club on the way back to Amy and Brett’s place. The entire front area was taped off, cops were everywhere, and police lights filled the darkness. The sidewalk was covered in a pool of blood, something straight out of CSI, and photographers took pictures of the scene. Yet it felt surreal, and the huge crowds lent to it an almost spectacle like fiasco rather than the gruesome crime scene that it was. Back at the apartment we talked about what a crazy night it had been. The night ended late, and a group of 5 walked from the Cross back into the CBD along Williams Street. This particular street is famous for 2 reasons, super car dealerships (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maseratti) and hookers. Frankly, I was giddy coming up to one of the little parks that dot the street. I had a preternatural sense that there would be something completely bizarre to witness. Our friend Jeremy quietly noted that the area was renowned for Transvestite hookers, and 3 seconds later we cruise by, what else, a tranny hooker. Perfect way to end the night.

On Saturday we took Ryan to the Paddington Market after a flat white from Barefoot. I am always amazed at how much better Paddington Market is compared to pretty much any other market in Sydney. While most of the markets sell trinkets from Asia, Paddington has local artisan’s who make quality, unique products. It is by far the best place to get a gift in Sydney, in my humble opinion of course. We headed back into the Cross, or rather Darlinghurst that night to go eat dinner at Kika, a tapas bar. The bus from Circular Quay to Kings Cross dropped us off practically right outside of Candy’s, yet there was even more drama on the street again as we walked down the road. Instead of a stab victim, we were greeted with an unconscious man lying in the middle of the sidewalk who was being given mouth to mouth by a prostitute (not a tranny). The man reeked of booze, but Ryan was concerned and asked the woman if she needed help. She declined and Ryan was worried that the man needed chest compressions. An ambulance sped to the scene and we decided to head to the restaurant. After a scrumptious dinner, we walked up the road to go see a movie at Govindas, a Hare Krishna run restaurant and cinema. The cinema is so cool, because your seats are actually huge futons with pillows. Very comfortable, perhaps too comfortable because Veronica snoozed the entire way through ‘Be Kind Rewind’. The movie was decent, nothing to get extremely excited about, but still entertaining nonetheless.

Sunday was a bit of a lay day. Made some food, did some laundry, watched the news. The World News reported on the Bush wedding, which ended up being a hilarious report. The reporter interviewed some hillbilly’s who had driven to Crawford to buy souvenirs. One old man interviewed was perhaps the biggest hick I have ever seen. Think of the biggest stereotype you can think of and this man fit it to a T. His slow drawl seemed straight out of a movie, and he eloquently stated that ‘Thems our royal family’ while he cackled like an insane person. It was a fitting end to the weekend.

Veronica wasn’t happy that I wanted to write about the events of this weekend. Her concern was that our families would be worried, and I can definitely see her point. However, Sydney is statistically a far safer city to live in than Dallas. The murder per capita rates don’t even compare, and let’s be honest, this weekend was a one off for us, as we never go out anymore.

Monday, May 5, 2008

14,000 feet above the Earth






This past weekend we celebrated my 31st birthday, and I can say with the utmost certainty that it will be forever etched in my mind.

Veronica had us wake early on Saturday to head into the city. I thought we were going to get on a boat to cruise around the harbor for the day. But I was way off target. My sweet wife had organized for us, and 12 of our friends to go skydiving.

Shock doesn’t quite do justice to finding out that you are about to jump out of a plane, that day. The moment we stopped in front of the Skydive office I felt a sudden wave of panic, and I kept asking, ‘Your joking, right?’ It seemed that all my talk of wanting to skydive but not having enough money might be a load of horsesh**! Luckily, after about a minute of feeling some serious butterflies, I wrapped my mind around it and started getting excited. Jumping out of a plane in itself was a surprise, but seeing all of our friends pile into the office was even more unexpected. It made the experience that much sweeter in the end.

Everyone except Gavin rode down South in a van to the jump center. The day was gorgeous, with barely a cloud in the sky and no breeze. After waiting for about 3 hours we were finally called up. After suiting up our tandem instructor told us 3 key things: how to exit the airplane, what to do in freefall, and how to land. Seventeen of us then got into a pretty small plane and took off. Interestingly, I was sitting right next to a sign stating that the maximum weight limit in the cargo hold was 800 pounds. I’m not exactly Stephen Hawking’s but I could figure out that according to that we were seriously overloaded. Thank goodness we didn’t have to worry about landing!

The flight was loud, and quite short. Before you had time to really process what was happening the door was open and people were diving out. Flipping out of the plane and seeing the Earth and sky rotate around was absolutely insane! After straightening out the free fall felt incredible. Obviously we were just hauling ass straight towards the Earth for what seemed like a fairly long time. When the chute was deployed the first thing I noticed (besides being thankful that the chute had opened) was that my hands were freezing.

Gliding down with the parachute was fun, but it lacked significantly compared to the rush of the fall. Still, I enjoyed cruising down over the green landscape, but I was stoked to be back on the ground. As everyone else landed around us I felt a delightfully euphoric giddiness. Afterwards we celebrated with some ice-cold Corona’s. To say it was a great day would be an understatement. After such a lackluster 30th birthday last year Veronica delivered such a perfect day. How lucky am I to have such an EPIC wife?

Yesterday we took it extremely easy. Took Ryan back to Barefoot now that he is a big fan of flat whites, even though he didn’t drink coffee before arriving in Australia. Drove out to Bronte and Bondi Beach to see some sights. We then met up with our friend Magnus to play some lawn bowls. Pretty similar to curling, except without the ice. For dinner we took Ryan to our favorite place, the Bavarian Bier CafĂ©. A titillating mango beer was the perfect end to a stellar weekend.