The biggest Brett Favre Fan in the World
Trip Start
Mar 16, 2009
1
15
47
Trip End
Jul 22, 2009
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The last couple days have been quite entertaining. On Friday, I decided to try my hand at Boogie Boarding on Bondi. I was pretty terrible.
Boogie-ing on Bondi
Kristen had gotten badly burned the day before, and she doesn't like the water, so she stayed on the beach and chilled out while I took a borrowed boogie board and did my thing. At first I tried to go in where most of the other surfers were, but without flippers in bigger waves I was terrible. I drifted far from where I entered and almost got my head cut off by a surfer. The current was a lot stronger than I expected... No waves caught...On a second try I went into calmer waters near the swimming area of the beach and had some mild success. I didn't bash my head in this time, and I did manage to ride a couple waves into the beach. It was fun, but I wish I were a little better at it.
Action Shot
The beach is a funny place to me. It's filled constantly, but most people aren't actually doing anything. I can't sit still for so long. Neither can Kristen...even though she likes the relaxation much more than me. Even she gets restless. So after about 3 hours we were done. We went back to the hostel and changed and went for another long walk, down to nearby Tamarama Beach and then back the length of Bondi. As we were walking home toward the hostel, we ran into Taylor from two days before in the Blue Mountains. What a coincidence! But talk about real crazyiness, we ran into him about 5 minutes ago in the front of McDonalds! Nuts!
Back at the hostel we waited for the 7:00 PM all you can eat bar-b-q. They said it was all you can eat but they were pretty annoying about it making you wait and stuff and giving you tiny portions. Whatever, it was only 6 bucks.
Off of Tamarama
It was at the Bar-b-q that we met the BIGGEST BRETT FAVRE FAN in the WORLD. Byron is from Tasmania. An Aussie through and through, we were pretty surprised when he started telling us what he'd done last December...taken 5 weeks off to follow Brett Favre and the Jets around the US for Brett's last games. Byron has been a football fan ever since seeing Brett in 1993. His memory is unbelievable, I mean the guy eats, sleeps, and breathes Brett Favre. I could not have been happier to meet someone who finally understood American football (REAL FOOTBALL) and from Tasmania no less. Byron even played for a Tasmanian team at one point, apparently there are 4 teams in "Tazzy" as the locals call it.
The Biggest Brett Favre Fan in the World
We talked football and other things for well over three hours. Byron jokes that he got into Football because he liked the cheerleaders, but he knows more than the cheerleaders now. Byron's stories about following around the Jets were great and he really remembers just about any game he has ever seen. He's been to about 12 in his life, which is more NFL games than Kristen and I have been to combined. He followed around Brett and started out with all the Jets gear and a chessehead. But then he was in NYC and they gave him a "Cheesecake head" at a game and put him on the radio. We talked about Brett's problem of throwing interceptions and how he'd ended the season once against the Eagles in the playoffs by throwing one... Byron goes, "Oh yea, I remember that game, 2004." He takes a two hour lunch from his post working for the Australian Government in Canberra every Tuesday to watch Monday night football from the states.
Ocean=Pretty
It was a blast, we shared Tasmanian wine, a very good white zinfendel, and sat around talking it up until past 11. It was Good Friday, so there were no bars or anything open, but it was the perfect Friday night. Now Byron's going to go back to supporting the Packers, as we all agree that Aaron Rodgers is going to be great some day, even though he's sad that Brett's retiring (again). It was just an all around good time. I reminiced about my own long lost football days...oh man. Oh well.
In fact, we ran into Byron coming out of the hostel this morning and he gave us a ride from Bondi back to the city. Before dropping us off at our new hostel (which is pretty awful...oh well), Byron and I posed for a picture with him in his number 4 Brett Favre Jets hat, signed by the Jets Cheerleaders. This is an open call to all readers out there (all 1 or 2 of you), if you can find every Brett Favre game on tape or DVD, Byron is looking for the set. He's seen most games, and can recount them all with great accuracy, including the one where Deion Sanders picked off Brett and ran it back for a touchdown, taunting Brett Favre the whole way, but he wants to see them all. Someone in Wisconsin has to have taped them all...
Byron remembers being at a San Francisco game and running into a guy who gave him a bit of grief about Brett's poor performance. But then that guy admitted he loved Brett Favre: "Brett Favre is more American than Apple Pie; you'd have to be a communist to not love Brett Favre!" Couldn't have said it better myself...and I did not expect to meet a guy from Tasmania who reminded me of it...
Traveling is fun. Meeting interesting and fun people, well, it's, you guessed it, pretty damn fun.
So after dropping our things at the hostel this morning and saying goodbye to Byron, we walked up to the Rocks, the old section of Sydney. Now it's reall a high end section of old buildings nestled beneath the Harbour Bridge and in between skyscrapers. There's a terrific weekend market there. We got Kristen a pair of nice earrings, and we probably would have bought more if we were headed home tomorrow and not to Hong Kong! There was a guy doing spray painting demonstrations, using newspaper and spray paint to craft terrific pictures on the spot. It was a fun atmosphere.
Bondi at Sunset
We then walked down to Circular Quay and caught the ferry out to Manly Beach. We sat across from some old guy who did not stop talking the entire ferry ride, with an encyclopedic knowledge of Sydney. It would have been great if we could have understood a word he said...
We walked up and down Manly beach, but the weather wasn't that great and the beach was full of seaweed. We did get good pizza a block off the beach though. There is a main pedestrian drag called the "Corso" with cool little shops, and a little market of it's own. Basically, we just walked a lot. We caught the ferry back to Circular Quay, where we walked around to the steps of the Opera House with about 17,000 Easter weekend tourists. It was cool to see up close.
What makes the Opera House such a great building in my mind is that it's like a mountain range. Like a mountain range? Yeah, bear with me. What I love about the mountains is that from every angle they look just a little bit different. Every vantage point offers a totally new picture. That is how the Opera House is as a building. every different angle or spot offers a totally different view and a totally different impression of the building. It's great.
We walked home and got to the hostel by about 4:45, ending a long long day of walking around Sydney (we'd left at 10:15 AM). We arrived just in time for a Middle School band to check in. Yeah, Sydney Backpackers is a little different from the other hostels we've stayed in...but oh well. Now we just have to get ready for Hong Kong and the next adventure. It should be an interesting one...though I hope every internet cafe there doesn't have 84 teenagers screaming in Chinese about War Craft 3, like this one... If only I knew what they were saying. Oh well.
--Jimmy
