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Family Life on the Gold Coast
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The next few days of my trip were spent living the family life in the Gold Coast with a lady who took care of me and my sisters when I was a mere pup. Louise Lewis (now Pase) was always angelic in my memory and her present-day kindness, glowing happiness and general outlook on life didn't disappoint my faint memory from 20 years ago.
I spent my time living in her house with her three kids (John - 13, Joe - 11 and Mia - 15), boyfriend (Warren - maybe 50 but definitely going on 15), and Japanese exchange student (Arissa - 20). Living a more relaxed life, I was able to catch up on lost hours of sleep, make myself at home and feel more anchored than I had in many months. As a result, I got out of touch with the whole blogging aspect of my trip and subsequently have decided to condense the days (that now all blend into one great experience) into one entry.
In my brief time as a part of this Gold Coast family I was able to have some truly awesome experiences while refueling my mental and physical tanks that had been drained to near empty before the pending madness that was to come. Having said that, I did manage to keep busy with various activities and adventures as follows:
Road trip that brought me to Surfer's Paradise, Byron Bay, Nimbin, Coolangatta, Carrarra, and a few others. Byron Bay was an amazing town that could rival any beach side vacation town in the world. Nimbin was a hippies paradise high in the mountains behind the Gold Coast. Coolangatta and Carrarra were wonderfully local towns that have managed to preserve at least some of the non-tourist flavor, while Surfer's Paradise reminded me of Daytona beach during bike week every time I went there. The huge surf was the only thing really connecting these places and there were men, women, kids and elders omnipresent up and down the coast surfing at all hours of the day.
Watching a surfing contest in Surfer's Paradise and thinking, "How hard could this be?" The contest was an "air" competition meaning that the surfers only scored points for stunts that sent them flying in the air.
It was also at this venue that I met the lovely Surfer's Paradise meter maids which were historically there to feed your car meters to prevent parking tickets but obviously more of a publicity stunt these days.
Learning to surf every morning and not even getting close to getting up for real until the third time. Warren and I got up in the mornings to hit the waves and I was struggling to figure it out even on the big board he gave me. When I finally got up for real, I had a brief 8 seconds of ecstasy as I got up on a "killer" wave before getting rudely thrown back down to reality and a mouthful of sand.
Hanging out with Arissa and her 2 friends also from Okinawa, Yuka and Marina. I have never in my life heard as much giggling as I heard in these short few days when you got the three of them together.
We all spent time jumping on Louise's trampoline and I swear that there wasn't a second that went by where at least two of them weren't giggling.
Driving up to O'Reilly's treetop canopy walk and gardens with Yuka, Marina and Arissa.
Madonna, Cher and more giggling were staples of the car ride up and back, while coasting in neutral for 20 km on the windiest road in the world was the only way we were able to get back to the nearest town after hitting empty shortly after leaving the summit to head down the windiest road in the world. Oh, did I mention how windy the road was, which made the whole surfing in neutral adventure something of a video game to me and another excuse for the three girls to giggle their hearts out.
I took Louise, Warren, Arissa and Marina out to dinner and ice cream before Arissa and I hit up a local bar with a cover band playing all American music.
We proceeded to go cosmic bowling and check out the midnight surf under a full moon.
I got the opportunity to do a little housework as I helped gauk and sand holes at Lou's new rental house that she had purchased a few weeks before.
I think I could go back and do that again while learning to surf for real... maybe next year! We also went down south to check out Warren's plot of land on which he was contemplating putting a rental house as well. This was an experience in itself as we did a bit of off-roading and I did my best to avoid the million or so bees he had on his property. The redeeming aspect of the bees is that we had fresh honey the entire time I was staying at Lou's house!
My streak with amazing meat pies continued with Big Dad's pies, while we cooked as a family most nights including picking up fresh seafood from a local trawler to cook up. I spent a day carting the kids to and from the local park to play on the jungle gyms and catch small crayfish in the creek, playing at their soccer practice, making ice cream runs, jumping on the trampoline, and generally feeling like I was 12 again. We played various card games as well as some very odd Japanese slapping games in which I'm pretty sure the object was to hurt me, but the end result was the same as always, more giggling.
I also caught myself vocalizing my inner dialogue for the first time on the trip... a.k.a. talking to myself! This also happened to happen on the same day that I thought everything moved in slow motion for a while, which was actually a pretty cool feeling because I was able to think so far ahead and actually plan out what was going to happen in the next few seconds as if I had minutes to prepare for them... although that could have all been in my head. Bottom line, I found myself having a conversation with myself for a bit.
I think it would be insufficient just to say that the time I spent with the Gold Coast family was awesome because it was so much more. I realized that I actually did miss family life even though I was traipsing around the world having the time of my life. The interactions between the three kids reminded me exactly of me and my two older sisters growing up and I was able to see just how tough my parents must have had it. Good thing I am trying my best to pay them back in spades these days...
And at the end of it, as the plane took off for Sydney, I remember thinking "heck, I could jump it now!"
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