I Saw the Sign

The in-credibility (aka lack of credibility) of the signs in Oz strikes again! This has happened to me more times than I can count so you would think I would have learned! This morning, after working (or running) Tyler to the train station, I decided to go grab some tea and waffles from a coffee shop that I walked by many mornings and afternoons. The smell of waffles always pulled me in so I decided it was time to try it. I wandered over and took a look at the menu posted on the huge board on the wall, listing all the different sorts of waffles. I asked for just an original waffle, with syrup on the side. The lady behind the counter gave me a surprised look that may have also passed for a bit confused. She said just a minute and went to talk to another girl. She then came back and said that they weren't serving waffles yet (using a tone - like "obviously"). It was 8 am, seemed like prime waffle time to me. I asked when they do start serving waffles. She had to go back and ask the other girl again who kept looking over at me like "who is this girl who wants to eat waffles at 8 am?" - and came back and said they don't start the waffles until at least 10. Obviously. Who would want to eat waffles at 8? That's ridiculous.
In some of other many examples of sign situations we've encountered:

• A bar down the street had a sign outside that advertised acoustic guitar on Friday night. On Friday night, Tyler and I went and there was no live music. We asked at the bar and they said the guy wasn't coming tonight. We told them their sign (on paper) was still posted on the door. They said "oh". It was still hanging when we left after having a drink.
• We went to a bar/club in Cairns that advertised 2 for 1 drinks all night on the sign outside. We went to the bar to order the 2 for 1 drinks and they said they weren't having that deal. Meanwhile, on a ppt behind them, the screen showed 2 for 1 drinks all night. The girl was like "oh - I don't make that presentation".
• Many restaurants, stores, and coffee shops don't post hours at all. I've heard that this is so they can open/close whenever they want.

Hardcore Bikers with the Band

It's been a fun weekend! We stayed in Adelaide for once instead of traveling around the country so that was a bit different. We went to some of Tyler's local hangouts including the Pancake House for dinner on Saturday and the Belgian Beer Cafe (BBC) for drinks on Friday night. Then Saturday night, we joined Claudio and Sandra and headed down to Glen Elg, the city on the coast that I've been to a few times now. Claudio's friends had a 2 person duet/band deal that was performing. It was just this couple that's been performing together for years and years - and they perform 5-7 nights a week! It's their full-time job basically - besides doing booking for other bands. They were really good. The guy played guitar and the girl sang. She had a great voice. They did mostly classic type covers that everyone knew and could dance to so that was fun. And when they had a break - we all went across the street to the coffee shop and stuff. They were super nice! It was tons of fun hanging out with the "band".
Then this morning, Tyler and I suited up our bikes (well I used his coworker's Doug's fancy road bike) and met up with Claudio and Sandra and Rudy for a hard-core bike ride up Mount Lofty - the highest point in the nearby suburb of Adelaide Hills. I had been pretty nervous before. I don't even know if I've ever been on a ROAD bike with those super skinny tires and we were going with people who do road races! How was I ever going to keep up? It ended up not being too bad. We biked the 5ish kms over to the path and then took a long windy path up the mountain. It was steep in parts but we weren't going too fast - in fact Tyler was definitely the quickest. It was a good workout for sure and the scenery was beautiful. We were on a bike path too that was separate from the road so we didn't have to worry about cars to that was really nice. When we got over the top, we stopped at Norton Summit for a snack/dinner and a chance to warm up our hands. We had already started going down a bit and the cool air blowing right at my hands was freezing! Before long it was starting to get dark so we hurried on down. Down was way harder than up for me. This time we were on the real mountain windy road with cars and tight turns. I was constantly breaking! Luckily Tyler stayed back and hung out with me to make sure that I made it down ok. It was a little freaky going too fast and the brakes on Doug's handlebars were maybe a bit further than normal reach for me so my fingers were getting stiff by the end. It was an awesome day though and the views both with the vineyards on the way up and the sunsetting on the way down were incredible! Unfortunately we didn't see any koalas in the trees as the signs along the road warned us of. We also didn't encounter any roos - which other signs warned of us as well. Crazy! Too bad I didn't have my camera....

Hanging with the Locals

I've been finding more ways to hang out with the locals of Adelaide lately so that's been pretty exciting! Wednesday night I went to my first running club run. I walked into this room at a little elementary school about 2 km from Tyler's and there were like 40 people in there! It was crazy! A few of them were walkers and then some people were doing a 14 k run and some were doing an 8 k run. I just wanted to do the 8k so they pointed me in the direction of people doing that and then we all started running. People were super friendly. Somehow I eventually ended up running with some older folks who definitely still gave me a really good workout. Rose was like 60 and Dave was like 75 - haha! They were quick though. And then Dave invited me to come back on Thursday night for more of a track workout type run with a different group that he belongs to. I told him I would so I met back up again last night and he directed me to the younger person's room (being from like teenagers - 40ish). The 5 girls started with a 5 k "warmup" - haha! After that - I could have stopped. It was the fastest warmup I've done in awhile. We were probably going faster than 8 min miles for the whole distance. Then we met up with the guys (about 10-15 guys) and started doing a track workout of repeat 200s with about a 30 sec break between each. The coach reminded me of Mr. Collyard in high school. He was super friendly but you could tell he was also a bit strict too. He only wanted me to do 10 200s because otherwise I might hurt something - haha - and he wanted to make sure I would come back next time too. After all that - I was totally DEAD. THEN we did another 3k-ish cooldown at about an 8 min mile pace - THEN - I still had to run home. It was 7 pm and that's about the time that Tyler gets home so I didn't want to keep him waiting so I had to RUN the whole way home - I was practically crawling by the time I got to the door - haha! It was really fun though and everyone was super friendly, coming up and introducing themselves to me and telling me to come back next week (They meet Tues and Thurs) - so that was awesome!!!
Then then - this morning, Sandra and I went for a 32 k bike ride along the local river bike trail which was really cool and very pretty too! It was fun! :)

Valpo World

How bout I was just walking through the Rundle Mall downtown area when some guy came up to me and asked if I really went to Valpo (I was wearing a Valpo sweatshirt). He had an Australian accent but I guess he's been living in Columbus, Ohio for the last 5 years and was just here for a 5 week holiday. He has a son starting at Valpo next year - crazy! I guess he used to be a pastor at a Lutheran church down the street from Tyler's place in Adelaide. So yeah. Small world :)

Great Barrier Reef Videos

Here are some of my videos while snorkeling the reef. They are no where near able to capture the amazing colors visible underwater and they are a bit shaky and sometimes not focused when floating around and being pulled by the currents. They'll give you a brief idea though - it was amazing!
General - lots of colors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im9STCBUw-g
My favorite yellow fish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZYfbV-ebFQ
The nemo fish in the sea anemone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsrqbmcGzg4
Giant turtle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efwxKUPLCKo
Sharks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpuIsNrsWDw
General - lots of colors and me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxHRV4fF-bw
General - lots of colors and lots of fish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rue80kURJg

[Cans]

Great Barrier Reef, check! Yay! Tyler and I just got back from an amazing weekend up in Cairns - pronounced "Cans" in Australian. I can't even begin to figure out where to start! It was such an exciting and amazing trip!
We left for Cairns which is in the northeast corner of Australia on Thursday afternoon, arriving there late Thursday night. Tyler's coworker Claudio and Claudio's girlfriend Sandra came with us too. We stayed that first night at a hostel in Cairns and wandered around the city a bit.
The next day we got on the ProDive live aboard boat for our scuba diving and snorkeling adventure in the Great Barrier Reef. We spent 3 days and 2 nights snorkeling and scuba diving with a group of about 30 other people on the boat. There were 3 other snorkelers besides me and 2 were a couple that was pretty seasick so they didn't snorkel every time. (I definitely understand the seasickness cuz I was a little queasy most of the time that we were on the boat - and I was even taking constant motion sickness medicine - Eek). I mostly snorkeled with a girl from Germany named Sandra who was super nice. We snorkeled about 3 times each day for about an hour each time and I took tons and tons of pictures. We saw with very colorful fish, huge turtles, and even saw the Nemo fish. I hadn't done too much snorkeling before so it took a little getting used to but by the end I was pretty comfortable. I took tons and tons of pictures because I didn't know how many would actually turn out. The reefs that we were swimming in were super shallow - we could go right and touch them if we really wanted to. On our very last snorkel, we saw 3 sharks! They swam near us and circled a group of fish that seemed pretty unphased by the sharks being right by them. I was a bit more freaked out and tried to get a video but ended up swimming away too fast to catch much of them. I'll post the video online.
Besides just snorkeling, after much deliberation, I decided to do the scuba dive trial on board. Tyler and all the other people on the boat had been doing scuba dives instead of snorkeling and it seemed like we were seeing pretty similar things (although he did see a few more unique fish and eels than I did). I was super scared to do it - especially with the sky diving pressure change experience. Before going down - I had to watch a 30 min video and then Tanner suited me up with a tank and all that stuff. We went down only about 2 meters and I had to be able to perform 2 skills at that depth before we could go any deeper. The 2 skills were to fill my mask with water and then empty it while underwater and then to pull my regulator out of my mouth, drop it, and then retrieve it calmly. It definitely took quite a few panic-ed tries and swims back to the top before I could do these. Eventually though I was "good enough" to go. Tanner controlled my bouyancy so I didn't really have to think about too much - except clearing my ears - which was super stressful. I was probably being over sensitive to clearing my ears and was doing it constantly - maybe even too hard than I was supposed to. I couldn't tell if my ears were pulled or if there was just water in my ears. We ended up going down to about 7.5 meters and swam with a turtle and stuff like that so it was pretty neat. I think it would take quite a few more times though before I am anywhere near comfortable scuba diving.... I am still deliberating about doing the open water training... It really only takes one bad pressure change to possibly mess up my other ear. Eek. I would also want to be super careful about getting a super strict dive instructor cuz mine seemed a bit more careless and carefree than I would have liked...
It's hard to figure out how to summarize all the events from the weekend. It was so exciting and so fun - I can't describe it all without writing a long blog. After returning back to Cairns and readjusting to the stability of land, we continued our adventures. We met up with a bunch of the people on the boat for a fun night. We ended up dancing at a bar called the Woolshed (should have been called the Toolshed)- haha! Sunday we took a train to the city of Kanunda where I held a koala! It clung to my shoulder so tightly - it was adorable! I want a pet koala! We also got to feed kangaroos and wallabyes. Then we took ATV 4-wheelers through the jungle. We got to do jumps and were on a pretty narrow track most of the time. We went through some huge puddles and Tyler COVERED himself with mud! We were all pretty muddy by the end though. We ended by doing loops around a motorcross track. We then took a skyrail (like a gondola) over the jungle - back to Cairns.
Monday we whitewater rafted down a class 3/4 river called Russell River. It was my first time in just a 2 person raft. The person in the back controls the steering so Tyler drove the first 2/3 of the trip and I got to navigate down the last few rapids. It was pretty exciting. We didn't tip over - although we were probably close for a bit - haha! The water was a bit more shallow than it is sometimes though so we had to do a good bit of scooting over rocks when we would get stuck. We had to do a hike through the jungle for about an hour to get to the put-in for the rafts. Along the way - the guides picked up a toad that secreted toxins out of its back. I guess they're as prevelant as rats down there and its actually a law in Queensland (the state we were in) that if you pick one up - it is illegal to put it back down alive - so they had to kill it. I guess only one animal has figured out how to kill it and that's the kukkaburra - it kills it by picking it up and dropping it consistently on rocks until it dies.
Besides all these adventures - we did spend a few evenings and then the morning on Tuesday in the city of Cairns. Its a very international touristy type city that was really fun. We heard so many different languages. It seems to cater to the adventure types too - with the diving, ATVs, white water rafting, skydiving, bungee jumping, hot air balloons, etc - all readily available. There was a night market that sold very cheap massages - like $20 for 45 minutes total for both Tyler and me. There was a huge lagoon pool right next to the ocean that was really pretty. We had beautiful weather the entire time - like 70s and 80s degrees - and it was winter there! It was hard to leave our weekend vacation for sure!

Wines Galore!

Tyler and I spent the weekend exploring the Barossa Valley - which is literally the Napa Valley of all of Australia. It is a good bit different from Napa though because all the wineries have FREE tastes of anywhere from 10-20 different wines. Crazy. We headed up on Saturday morning to the town of Tanunda which is kinda in the heart of the Barossa Valley. It's about 90 km from Adelaide. We checked into our little cabin and took out the bikes that they offered us. I had my first experience riding a tandum bike - it was super exciting! Unfortunately we weren't able to get the tires pumped up enough to spend the day riding those around. We biked with them to the first winery which was only like 1/4 mile away and then after doing the tastings there - we biked back to exchange the tandem bike for 2 individual bikes...sad.

We then went to 2 more wineries in the area of our cottage - basically next door to the first one we had gone to. After that - biking wasn't so easy so we walked the bikes back to the cottage before dinner. We headed out to downtown Tanunda (which is just a really tiny little town with probably about 5 restaurants in it) for dinner. It was delicious!
Sunday we continued our wine exploration - but this time I took over the driving - and Tyler handled most of the tasting. We went to 6 different wineries - and each had from 10-20 tastes. The tastes aren't really THAT small either - usually doing all the tastes would amount to 2-3 glasses of wine! Crazy! Some of the wineries were really cool. Rockford had a cool atmosphere being in old remodeled buildings like a stable and blacksmith shop. Charles Melton Winery had a neat atmosphere of sitting down at a long table for the tastes instead of the less personable standing at the bar idea that all other wineries do. We even had a cheese plate to go with our wine there! It was delicious! I think overall our top 3 wineries from the weekend were: Longmeil Winery, Rockford Winery, and Charles Melton Winery. All very tasty - especially the reds since its more the climate for those grapes around here.... Too bad I can only bring 2 bottles back in to the US - otherwise I could have a wine party :)