March 23, 2011
Surf Sessions = Reset...too tired to surf for awhile!
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Finally, a surf session at Yarrumba...with Ryan, the Hofman's son! (placeholder)
March 22, 2011
Surf Sessions = 32
Surf Sessions = 32
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Doubling Down on Double Island Point (placeholder)
March 19, 2011
Surf Sessions = 31 (did not meet the magic number of 30 surf days in 60 days of travel...but did get THIRTY surf sessions in...woohoo!!!)
Surf Sessions = 31 (did not meet the magic number of 30 surf days in 60 days of travel...but did get THIRTY surf sessions in...woohoo!!!)
Friday, March 18, 2011
Crikey! Trip to the Australia Zoo...home of the late Steve Irwin (placeholder)
March 18, 2011
Surf Sessions = 29
Surf Sessions = 29
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Surfing back at Noosa...I know, you are bored as a reader aren't you?! (placeheolder)
March 13, 2011
Surf Sessions = 25
Surf competition at the Noosa Festival of Surf has begun to get into full swing today. Today Alisa and I watched the alaea competition (imagine a thin wooden, finless board...almost like a skim board!). Really amazing watching them surf these thin finless things in waist high surf...and spinning 360's!
Surf Sessions = 25
Surf competition at the Noosa Festival of Surf has begun to get into full swing today. Today Alisa and I watched the alaea competition (imagine a thin wooden, finless board...almost like a skim board!). Really amazing watching them surf these thin finless things in waist high surf...and spinning 360's!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Taking a try at Tea Tree Bay (George) & Eumundi Market (Alisa & Maia) (placeholder)
March 12, 2011
Surf Sessions = 24
Surf Sessions = 24
Friday, March 11, 2011
Back at Noosa Heads and the Beginning of the Noosa Surf Festival (placeholder)
March 11, 2011
Surf Session = 23
Surf Session = 23
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Noodling around at Noosa Heads; met 5 of the 10 nastiest surfers ever (placeholder)
March 7, 2011
Surf Sessions = 18
Surf Sessions = 18
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Crikey! Roos on the 14th hole at the Hyatt!
March 5, 2011
Surf Sessions = 16
We went with the Hofmans to Ruby and Channa's house here in town. First Jill decided to take us to see our first Kangaroos...which happened to be at the local golf course! They were hopping along and nibbling the grass, much like deer back home.
Ruby and Channa are remodeling a home that they moved here from Brisbane - over 90 kilometers away! Ruby and Channa are the folks who ran the work trip on the Indo Jiwa in Indonesia. The organization is www.leapin.org if you want to check it out.
We had a lovely pancake breakfast at Ruby's mother's house next door and visited for a while before just going for a drive. Here is where the challenge came in because George is now driving Hofman's car (right hand drive of course) and shifting with his left hand! He has done this previously, but it is something!
Surf Sessions = 16
We went with the Hofmans to Ruby and Channa's house here in town. First Jill decided to take us to see our first Kangaroos...which happened to be at the local golf course! They were hopping along and nibbling the grass, much like deer back home.
Ruby and Channa are remodeling a home that they moved here from Brisbane - over 90 kilometers away! Ruby and Channa are the folks who ran the work trip on the Indo Jiwa in Indonesia. The organization is www.leapin.org if you want to check it out.
We had a lovely pancake breakfast at Ruby's mother's house next door and visited for a while before just going for a drive. Here is where the challenge came in because George is now driving Hofman's car (right hand drive of course) and shifting with his left hand! He has done this previously, but it is something!
Friday, March 4, 2011
Long Day in Australia...
March 4, 2011
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven (irrelevant now!)
OK, long day today....ugh! Sleep at the backpacker we stayed at last night was fair to middlin'. A bunch of 20-somethings stayed up fairly late and were fairly noisy. Add that to the need to leave the place by 5:00 AM to get to the airport and this made for a tiring start. We got to the Auckland Airport on time and had to haggle our way through the check-in. We had 5 kilos too much weight in one bag so there was a mad dash to redistribute it throughout our carry-on bags; the 5 extra kilos would've cost us $100 USD extra! We got 3.8 kilos out of our bags and the check-in agent just said to move on. The next hurdle was airport security, which was no hurdle at all. Maia still remembers that she has to take her shoes off to get past the screener in the USA...the security agent told her to keep them on and said,"You're not in the States little girl!" We finally boarded the plane which then proceeded to drive all over the runway...I was beginning to think we were going to drive the plane to Australia from NZ;>
We got to Sydney a few hours later and then went through customs which was also a breeze (customs agent looked at our declaration sheet and just said," Go to Australia and do not stop!"...now that was just plain funny!) and then spent the next 6 hours hanging around the Sydney Airport waiting for our flight to the Sunshine Coast about 500 miles north. We finally got to the Maroochydore (Ma-roo-chee-door) Airport (also known as the Sunshine Coast Airport) and was greeted by our friends waving a large beach towel with the American flag printed on it! Apparently there was a downpour ensuing outside the airport and our friend was using the towel as protection from the rain but then they realized how funny this was. Peter and Jill Hofman and Phil and Beth Bailey met us at the airport. They are friends of ours from our 2008 Indonesia short-term work trip. We got distributed amongst our friends for a drive back to Peter and Jill's, who are kindly putting us up for the duration of our stay in the Sunshine Coast (3 weeks...boy they do not know what they are getting into!). We emptied the cars of all of our "stuff" and promptly headed to Jill's favorite dog-walk beach...and it continued to rain (this all adds to the torrents of rain the Queensland coast has received for the last 2 months and the recent cyclone Yasi that ripped through Cairns in northern Queensland only a couple of weeks earlier).
All's well in a day that ends on a beach:)
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven (irrelevant now!)
OK, long day today....ugh! Sleep at the backpacker we stayed at last night was fair to middlin'. A bunch of 20-somethings stayed up fairly late and were fairly noisy. Add that to the need to leave the place by 5:00 AM to get to the airport and this made for a tiring start. We got to the Auckland Airport on time and had to haggle our way through the check-in. We had 5 kilos too much weight in one bag so there was a mad dash to redistribute it throughout our carry-on bags; the 5 extra kilos would've cost us $100 USD extra! We got 3.8 kilos out of our bags and the check-in agent just said to move on. The next hurdle was airport security, which was no hurdle at all. Maia still remembers that she has to take her shoes off to get past the screener in the USA...the security agent told her to keep them on and said,"You're not in the States little girl!" We finally boarded the plane which then proceeded to drive all over the runway...I was beginning to think we were going to drive the plane to Australia from NZ;>
We got to Sydney a few hours later and then went through customs which was also a breeze (customs agent looked at our declaration sheet and just said," Go to Australia and do not stop!"...now that was just plain funny!) and then spent the next 6 hours hanging around the Sydney Airport waiting for our flight to the Sunshine Coast about 500 miles north. We finally got to the Maroochydore (Ma-roo-chee-door) Airport (also known as the Sunshine Coast Airport) and was greeted by our friends waving a large beach towel with the American flag printed on it! Apparently there was a downpour ensuing outside the airport and our friend was using the towel as protection from the rain but then they realized how funny this was. Peter and Jill Hofman and Phil and Beth Bailey met us at the airport. They are friends of ours from our 2008 Indonesia short-term work trip. We got distributed amongst our friends for a drive back to Peter and Jill's, who are kindly putting us up for the duration of our stay in the Sunshine Coast (3 weeks...boy they do not know what they are getting into!). We emptied the cars of all of our "stuff" and promptly headed to Jill's favorite dog-walk beach...and it continued to rain (this all adds to the torrents of rain the Queensland coast has received for the last 2 months and the recent cyclone Yasi that ripped through Cairns in northern Queensland only a couple of weeks earlier).
All's well in a day that ends on a beach:)
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Goodbye to Chewbacca...prep for travel to Oz
March 3, 2011
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven = 6283
Today we bade farewell to "Chewbacca", our 1996 Honda Odyssey. George drove it to Turner's Auto Auction and handed the keys over (no title, registration papers or "pink slip" required! Apparently all of it is computerized here in NZ). We are told we will probably get $1500-2000 NZ for it; we paid $3800 for it in Christchurch and had a guaranteed buy-back from the dealer for $2800 so we were a bit disappointed at the prognosis. Alas, it was what it was. It is only money and not really that much anyways (we paid just over $3K US and may get $1.6K US...a rental would've cost us over $3K!) The gentleman was very nice to George and he took a cab back to the backpackers where we were staying at the airport. We spent the rest of the day and evening repacking our bags to accommodate the extra weight of what we acquired in NZ.
Ciao to Chewy and onward to Oz tomorrow!
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven = 6283
Today we bade farewell to "Chewbacca", our 1996 Honda Odyssey. George drove it to Turner's Auto Auction and handed the keys over (no title, registration papers or "pink slip" required! Apparently all of it is computerized here in NZ). We are told we will probably get $1500-2000 NZ for it; we paid $3800 for it in Christchurch and had a guaranteed buy-back from the dealer for $2800 so we were a bit disappointed at the prognosis. Alas, it was what it was. It is only money and not really that much anyways (we paid just over $3K US and may get $1.6K US...a rental would've cost us over $3K!) The gentleman was very nice to George and he took a cab back to the backpackers where we were staying at the airport. We spent the rest of the day and evening repacking our bags to accommodate the extra weight of what we acquired in NZ.
Ciao to Chewy and onward to Oz tomorrow!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Puttering around the Ponsonby neighborhood
March 2, 2011
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven = 6100
Today we struck out for a nice breakfast at Dizengoff's...apparently the best breakfast in the area. It turned out to be a nice Jewish cafe that served up the best flat white (espresso with milk) and a mean poached eggs with fried pastrami....Mmmmmmmmm:)
The food was great, the vibe was interesting and then we headed off for the day tooling around in Groovy Vibes, a second hand music CD store with an amazing collection of vinyl record covers (I mean AMAZING collection on the wall, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Osmonds (yep, Best of the Osmonds), the Doors, U2 (I drooled over those!), Nirvana, and hundreds of others you may or may not recognize). I forgot how much amazing artwork occurred on vinyl album covers in the 60's, 70's and even in the 80's. Alisa and I "acquired" some choice selections, like out-of print import U2 (woohoo...score!), and some other older treasures (Best of the Ramones for the pop-punk rocker in me!). We also tramped through several second-hand clothing stores which seemed to be selling a lot of early 80's and 90's American teenage clothing...you know, stuff you can still find at Goodwill and Valu Village for about 10 times the cost (eek!). One would do really well if they filled a 40 foot container of the best teen clothing found from the 80's and 90's in the States and shipped it to NZ and opened a shop....GOLD MINE!
So, needless to say, Alisa and I had fun browsing the racks and identifying "what year" the item represented...lots of fun!
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven = 6100
Today we struck out for a nice breakfast at Dizengoff's...apparently the best breakfast in the area. It turned out to be a nice Jewish cafe that served up the best flat white (espresso with milk) and a mean poached eggs with fried pastrami....Mmmmmmmmm:)
The food was great, the vibe was interesting and then we headed off for the day tooling around in Groovy Vibes, a second hand music CD store with an amazing collection of vinyl record covers (I mean AMAZING collection on the wall, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Osmonds (yep, Best of the Osmonds), the Doors, U2 (I drooled over those!), Nirvana, and hundreds of others you may or may not recognize). I forgot how much amazing artwork occurred on vinyl album covers in the 60's, 70's and even in the 80's. Alisa and I "acquired" some choice selections, like out-of print import U2 (woohoo...score!), and some other older treasures (Best of the Ramones for the pop-punk rocker in me!). We also tramped through several second-hand clothing stores which seemed to be selling a lot of early 80's and 90's American teenage clothing...you know, stuff you can still find at Goodwill and Valu Village for about 10 times the cost (eek!). One would do really well if they filled a 40 foot container of the best teen clothing found from the 80's and 90's in the States and shipped it to NZ and opened a shop....GOLD MINE!
So, needless to say, Alisa and I had fun browsing the racks and identifying "what year" the item represented...lots of fun!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Time to head to Auckland
March 1, 2011
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven =5950
Today we broke camp and headed to Auckland. George was able to "convince" the airline that having us depart NZ from Auckland instead of Christchurch was in their best interests. Christchurch was still reeling from the 6.3 earthquake that hit on the Feb. 25th and the airport was just beginning to function there. A third of the downtown central business district has been severely damaged and a rescue effort was still ongoing for people trapped inside the collapsed CTV Building (which apparently was fairly new). The quake was a shallow one which resulted in a huge lateral shift. The fact that Christchurch sits on land reclaimed from a river bed (similar to the Mexico City quake's circumstances) exacerbates a shallow quake; kind of like sitting in a bowl of Jello. Another circumstance also "enhanced" the force of the quake...reflection of the quake off volcanic rock back towards Christchurch. This effectively made Christchurch the victim of 2 quakes, the first primary quake with the "second" quake directly on the heels of the first one. All in all, it appears from the TV news reports that we have seen that this is New Zealand's darkest hour. Pray for those trapped, for those who have passed, and for their families.
After an hour and a half of wrangling the airline reservation agent on the phone, we were able to reschedule our flight to leave from Auckland instead. This did present a problem for us, which was that now we did not have a car dealer's guarantee of purchasing our Honda Odyssey back from us at an agreed price...because he was all the way down in Christchurch. This fact prompted us to leave the Coromandel a couple of days early to ensure we could get rid of Chewbacca at New Zealand's largest automobile auction house. Our trip to Auckland was uneventful with one exception...no place to stay. This proved more problematic than we had envisioned on a weekday. Apparently many native Christchurch folk were staying in Auckland along with many tourists. There was not a place to be had. After 2 hours of searching, we finally found a hotel in downtown Auckland. We settled in around 6 and went out for some yummy cafe food.
Surf Sessions = 16
Km Driven =5950
Today we broke camp and headed to Auckland. George was able to "convince" the airline that having us depart NZ from Auckland instead of Christchurch was in their best interests. Christchurch was still reeling from the 6.3 earthquake that hit on the Feb. 25th and the airport was just beginning to function there. A third of the downtown central business district has been severely damaged and a rescue effort was still ongoing for people trapped inside the collapsed CTV Building (which apparently was fairly new). The quake was a shallow one which resulted in a huge lateral shift. The fact that Christchurch sits on land reclaimed from a river bed (similar to the Mexico City quake's circumstances) exacerbates a shallow quake; kind of like sitting in a bowl of Jello. Another circumstance also "enhanced" the force of the quake...reflection of the quake off volcanic rock back towards Christchurch. This effectively made Christchurch the victim of 2 quakes, the first primary quake with the "second" quake directly on the heels of the first one. All in all, it appears from the TV news reports that we have seen that this is New Zealand's darkest hour. Pray for those trapped, for those who have passed, and for their families.
After an hour and a half of wrangling the airline reservation agent on the phone, we were able to reschedule our flight to leave from Auckland instead. This did present a problem for us, which was that now we did not have a car dealer's guarantee of purchasing our Honda Odyssey back from us at an agreed price...because he was all the way down in Christchurch. This fact prompted us to leave the Coromandel a couple of days early to ensure we could get rid of Chewbacca at New Zealand's largest automobile auction house. Our trip to Auckland was uneventful with one exception...no place to stay. This proved more problematic than we had envisioned on a weekday. Apparently many native Christchurch folk were staying in Auckland along with many tourists. There was not a place to be had. After 2 hours of searching, we finally found a hotel in downtown Auckland. We settled in around 6 and went out for some yummy cafe food.
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