Kayaking around the Bay
Sydney,
Australia
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Wednesday 2nd April 2008. Time 10.16am. Time I am meant to leave to go kayaking 10.30am. Now I'm sure you can see where this is going, the old Oliver routine of needing to wake up for something and I almost always oversleep, its happened with work many times and the excuses I used I'm sure where never believed but I got away with it, ones like, 'oh my car wouldn't start so I had to get the mechanic next door to help,' or 'the road on my way to work was flooded...I had to find another route,' and its the fact that these excuse were believed that I gave myself the name at work of 'untouchable'.
However today I wasn't at work, these excuses would not help and neither would blaming the guy at work who didn't speak English, I had just 14 minutes to wake myself up, get my breakfast and then make my self look beautiful, which in the hostel consists of splashing water on my face and then brushing my teeth, maybe a quick spray of deodorant, then off to my room to find something that smells reasonably clean. I'm proud to say that I did that all in 13 minutes giving me 1 minute to admirer myself in the mirror, man I am brilliant, ha-ha.
Down in reception I found a 'basset's' all sorted bunch of 7 people waiting on the minibus to go. We had the slightly heavy set Dutch ladies, a German man with a head oddly resembling an over sized balloon, an American duo who at first I thought were a couple (later I was to find out they were brother and sister) and a German girl with really big boobies (thank you Rob for teaching me what is really important in life) (everyone else...don't worry I do learn her name and I don't just refer to her as big boobies girl).
After 5 minutes of standing there in silence, sort of like an episode of Eastenders where 2 unlikely people had just announced they were sleeping together, my thoughts turned to the Americans, one of the hostel crew arrived in what could only be described as the oldest working vehicle in Australia, it looked as though it could have been a hippy van and the smell inside definitely supported my idea, but the windows open and speeding down the aussie streets the smell was gone and Sam our guide from the hostel was telling us that we had a choice between small faster kayaks or the longer slower ones, she said if we had experience we could go for the smaller ones and I thought back to the days of my kayaking experience.
Ah yes many of you might not know this, but it was years ago during the summer, when I was 11 or so, my parents would drop me and my sister off at willen lake on the water sports week, I guess they got guilty about always dumping us off at my Auntie Jackie's and Uncle Peter's, I mean imagine having your own 4 kids to handle, I mean the Jones girls are no easy task now, but then at 7 in the morning my sister and I appearing on your doorstep with my mum still in the car waiting to make sure we got inside ok...sometimes I swear she didn't even wait for that. Anyway back to Kayaking, so when she asked if I had experience I just said.... 'YES I do', so I became experienced. I was impressed that I was actually the first one on the water and found my equilibrium or balance for you dumb people, quite quickly, however just as quick as I had found my equilibrium I was joined by big boobies girl, who I took at this time to ask her name (more for your benefit than mine) and it was Maria, like the singing nun, however this one had to clean the hostel instead, hahaha.
We were quickly joined by everyone else and we were away, navigating anchored boats in the bay we were heading towards shark island, an island with a view of the opera house, harbour bridge and city, the island had been purchased by the national trust as apparently that view is worth the couple million they spent for it, and let me tell you it really is. Many people have paid thousands just to be married on this island and at new years you have to pay $400 which is 200quid just to get on the island to watch the fireworks.
But we quickly left Shark Island, the wind was picking up and we had to make it across to Milk Beach. Now we were told we could go as quick or as slow as we liked, I opted for the more gentle experience of paddling ahead then slowing down and waiting for the others, as this we Sam (our guide) said at least she'd be able to take some pictures of us. Now the balloon headed German raced ahead and he made it to Milk beach 5 minutes ahead of everyone else, and I thought 'ha-ha he is going to have a load of pictures on his c.d with none of him' yet I'll tell you now that when I checked the c.d back at the hostel, there are more pictures of him than anyone else on the trip, 'I thought how in hell did he do it....must've been the head.'
When we landed on Milk beach we went up onto this grassy area and Sam told us every group had to have a silly picture, she said this one we would all do star jumps at the same time, and then someone asked, what I thought, was a stupid question 'what is a star jump?' and of course it was the Americans that had asked it, I smiled to myself the irony that the American didn't know the actions for a simple exercise. So there we all were jumping up and down, now in the photos it looks like I'm not doing it right, however everyone else put there hands straight up in the air, I was doing a star jump, it therefore looks like my hands are out of sync, but I WAS the only one in time and doing it properly!!!! Just thought I'd clear that up now.
After the poorly executed star jump photo we went back to the bay we had started at and dragged our kayaks out of the water, my arms or chicken bones as many of you back home have referred to them as were feeling exhausted but I managed the task, and was rewarded with a kings ransom when told we could finish the steak from the beach parties BBQ that were there now, that I immensely enjoyed to end my days adventure.
