weekend stories
(I apologise in advance for this extremely long post.)This weekend and last weekend were really good. It's odd, I'm at a stage in my life where almost every weekend has something interesting/good going for it, even if what I'm doing is nothing out of the ordinary. It's something that definitely wasn't happening two or three years ago. It must be either the hermit crab in me has left, or maybe meeting people and expanding my personal horizons has more appeal, or maybe just that the people around me are now on the same page that I am. Whatever it is, it works well.
Last saturday Nov 13 was the first after arriving back from my europe trip. It was pretty much a chance to catch up with people and get back into the beautiful sydney life. Friday night before, we'd stayed at Cameron's to have a bit of a poker night using his uber cool poker chips -- with real life bellagio playing cards! It was my first experience of playing Texas hold-em poker, which was actually rather fun. Everyone gets dealt two cards at the start, which they keep hidden from view. Then as successive betting rounds are made, five cards are revealed in the middle (three at first, then one more, then the last one). You have to make the best poker hand possible with the two you're holding, and any three of the five cards in the middle. It's more of a thinking game than Blackjack, because it's not just pure luck. You have to calculate the probabilities of someone having better cards than you based on what's in the middle, and also try to win the psychological game of betting at the same time. It's very addictive (in a wholesomely fun, non-problematic-gambling way).
Anyway, I ended up losing quite a bit with that game, because Cameron and others tend to have much more aggressive betting styles, making it uncomfortable for me to play because I don't like throwing in $100 on my first two card draw. They suck.
We played until about 1am when I was ready to crawl into bed two hours ago. There was a reason we were staying overnight - on Saturday we were heading into the blue mountains for our first Canyoning experience! yay! Canyoning involves traversing along the bottom of a canyon, which usually has a river or some other source of water flowing along at its base. The experience can be different each time you do it depending on the weather, the time of year, water level and temperature. We started with Empress canyon, which is quite beautiful and a good beginner's canyon, closest to Sydney and with an easy walk in and walk out - approx half an hour each way.
There were eight of us going - me, Cam, Cally, Phil, Simeon (Phil's friend and new frisbee recruit), Dave (friend of Cameron's at work), Nicole (his wife), and a friend of Dave's. Pretty much everyone from the Cameron camp was a complete novice. I was interested in going because Cameron has said multiple times how much he's enjoyed the canyons he's been on, and some of the photos he's brought back are really amazing.
Canyoning is very physically demanding, and you need to have a lot of equipment and do a lot of preparation before you leave. I think the list involved something like two changes of clothing, including three pairs of socks; shoes you can swim in; backpack you can get wet; wetsuit; helmet; harness; gloves for abseil; drybags to keep all these things dry; food for lunch and quick energy inside the canyon; ropes for abseiling; cameras and their associated waterproof casings... the list just went on. It seemed like a lot of work for a few hours of fun. Luckily cameron had a lot of this equipment already, like the harnesses, drybags, helmets and a few backpacks. I had to hire my wetsuit (and I'm so glad I did, and got a full length suit, because the water was freezing cold).
Anyway, we got there and climbed down a pretty steep path to get to the start of the canyon. There are two parts to Empress; upper and lower canyons. Most of the commercial adventure tour groups that take you down there only do the lower canyon portion, which is easier to walk into and also includes the spectactular 30m abseil down a waterfall cliff at the end. We were going to be Different and Cool and do the Upper canyon in addition to the Lower part. To be honest, there really wasn't that much more exciting in the upper canyon that we didn't see in the lower canyon, but it all added to the experience.
As I mentioned, the water was cold. Being early November, the water was still warming up from Winter temperatures and probably measured around 11 degrees. Brrr. Cally, Phil and Cameron were running around in 3/4 length wetsuits which would have been freezing! On my way through I started to lose feeling in my feet, which were encased in socks and dunlop volley-esque shoes. Not much sunlight gets through there either, so there's not a lot of chance to warm up.
Our first major mishap of the day happened when Simeon jumped off a rock and landed awkwardly on another rock underwater. He felt the shock of the land on both his feet, which was unfortunate :( This put him out of action for the rest of the canyon. Luckily we were just at the start of the lower canyon, so he could take the exit route up the stairs back to the Conservation hut. He seemed like he wasn't in too much pain, so we left him there and agreed to meet up at the car. [Cut to a week later, when we find out he's fractured both his feet, and walked out of the canyon on those fractured feet. Damn. He has one leg in a removable cast and the other in a plaster cast with wiring holding the bones together after surgery so they can heal properly. If we'd known, we definitely would have stopped the canyon right there. Poor guy...]
We started the lower canyon behind schedule because of all the mishaps and new people. We tried to do this half much speedier to beat the coming of the commercial groups. It was all fairly stock standard - there were quite a few blind-faith jumps we had to do into pools of indecipherable depth, trusting there was enough water to break out falls. It's not a good feeling and also somewhat slimy considering all sorts of wildlife and algae is breeding in the water. Makes it feel really ick when it goes up your nose. It did get more scenic as we got closer to the end - higher trees, narrow gorge parts and a very rainforesty feel.
We finally made it to the abseil waterfall at the end. This was the highlight of the canyon trip - I went first down the waterfall out of the newbies and LOVED it! The beginning of the abseil is really tricky, it's a ledge overhang with the waterfall cascading over you right at the start, but once past that section, the rest is candy. And gooood candy at that. I botched the start and ended up hanging upside down above a 30m drop (shiiiit!) but once that was fixed I had the time of my life. There were a lot of tourists watching us abseil down the waterfall, me in particular because I was one of the first and took my time coming down - Cameron took a photo of me from up above which was awesome. The surface is very slippery but it's not a strictly vertical abseil- I could seriously have done that ten times without getting bored.
When I got to the bottom, I jumped off the rocks into the waterfall pool - good fun if it weren't so cold. There was a nice tourist down the bottom who'd taken photos of me coming down the rock face and offered to send some to me, which was really sweet! So I got some great shots from the bottom of my dramatic descent.
We had some minor mishaps when Phil got his leg caught on the ledge and Cally remembered she was afraid of heights, but we all managed to get down safely in the end.
Roast chicken sandwiches have never tasted as good as they did at the end of that abseil.
Walking out was a challenge; it's alllll uphil from there and you're carrying wet gear and you're physically worn out from your adventure. It took us about half an hour and the whole trip was probably 3 hours longer than people had budgeted for. Bleh.
Sims ankles had swollen to enormous sizes by the time we got back to the car, so we tried to get him home as safely as possible. We took him back to his flat and even walked him inside, his ankles were so weak and unable to support his weight. Poor guy.
After that adventure, Cam and I headed to my car for the last installment of the 'spiders have infested my car' episode. He sprayed the underside one more time and I got him to spray inside the engine cavity too. We left it to stew for one more day just to be sure. After that, we chilled for a bit in my apartment (playing poker, of course). I was supposed to meet Ken for his birthday celebrations at Efes and then the Pav before Karaoke, but in the end I just met them all at Karaoke world on Elizabeth st. Fun but tiring, I ended up piking on Spectrum and caught a cab home.
Sunday i met up with Cameron and we went to see Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang at Fox studios. The place is a white elephant - so empty on a weekend! The shops are open until late, but it's in such an inconvenient area and everything is expensive, especially the food :p The movie was really enjoyable though, I'd like to see it again because I think I missed things first time around. I might wait until it comes out on DVD though.
We picked up my car, then I headed back home for dinner at Alfords Pt. Jasmine is so big now! She's also picked up a nasty habit of jumping on people, and she's not really the right size to be doing that to people of my height. At least she's still quiet and doesn't bark, but she looks like she's had fun digging up half the garden.
This weekend was also very busy and lots of fun.
Friday night was LOST at Ken's house. The episodes were definitely mediocre compared to last season, but it was still a fun night in. He has a new crush Vicki (awwww! cute!) who was there too.
I stayed at Alfords Pt on Friday night. I arrived at 1am and everyone was still wide awake and doing housey things. It was comforting to be around family again, actually. I stuck europe pins in my world map, so now I have pins in places other than the pacific rim. Exciting :)
Saturday woke up fairly late at 10:30, but the rest of the house was still asleep. Ah, this is what I miss about them! I watched scream2 on Foxtel - Foxtel is yet another thing I thought I'd miss, but really don't - then Mum, Dad and I headed to Miranda. I bought very little, but not for lack of trying. It was fun to be in the middle of my domestic heartland again. That place has been entertaining me for ten years! Only on the way back home did it occur to me that Zubin's wedding is next week and I have very little to wear...
With Dad's help I gave my car a quick wash and polish to remove all traces of pesticide that the very overpriced and bad quality hand carwash hadn't removed. I learned how car polish works - pretty nifty stuff. Like clockwork again, as soon as we'd finished, the rain started falling.
I headed to Ken's place for a Harry Potter marathon. It was with a bunch of his workmates so I didn't really know anyone, but his house is uber cool and it was fun to watch the movies again. We didn't make it to three (at least, I piked before number three) so that's another thing to add to the ToDo list.
Sunday we had planned brunch with eclecticallers at Bondi. It was me, Gabs, Chito, Phil and Cally, and we were later met by Ian. I tell ya - never eat at Gabby's cafe on Campbell Pde, because I found an insect in my hot chocolate. Ugh. No tip for you people.
After breakfast we had a short wander around the bookshops and novelty stores, then did the Bondi to Tamarama walk to see Scuplture by the sea. It was the first year that I'd seen it, and some of it is actually quite fun and interesting - others are just weird installations or very abstract art that just isn't enjoyable (so I don't like things that make me feel dumb, is that a crime? :p) My favourites include the star spangled spanner, the mosaic miniature kombi van about 1/8th actual size, the hurdles of life, giant friend egg on tamarama beach, and giant deckchairs (I seem to have a preoccupation with objects of unusual size).
We spent some time on Bronte beach throwing a frisbee around, and later Cally and I just chatted and waded at the water's edge. Unfortunately the weather was a bit crap and not really beachy appropriate, so we didn't swim. There was a cool percussion band that set up and started playing in the middle of the afternoon, adding some beats and background music to our lounging. It was a good afternoon!
We headed back to the guys' house at about 4:30 to play some poker! My new found addiction. Chito ended up cleaning up, but I had a huge stroke of good runs - I think I almost went bust about 5 or 6 times but managed to save it at the last second with a winning hand. I would get a decent amount of chips again, maybe $100, and then lose it all in a crazy bet. I ended up finishing third out of five, so hey, that's not so bad.
We watched a few episodes of scrubs to round off our lazy Sunday and I came home, had the urge to blog it all, and now should go to sleep!
posted by d @ 12:47 pm
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