Gusher

Ever heard someone say they have a "gusher" to deal with? Well, you don't want that to happen if that person is working in the apartment above you. Because that means that ALL the water gushing out of a hole in their pipe runs right down through the ceiling into your home.

What a frickin day!!! We noticed some water collecting down in our garage a couple days ago. Couldn't see where it was coming from and since it had rained badly that day I figured that could have been the cause of this "little" flood. I couldn't see any other place where the water could have come from - mind you the back wall is covered with - now wet - stuff.
Yesterday I meant to clean out the garage to check for any seepage from the back wall. But somehow I got side tracked and it seemed not to get worse and it was only the garage - most of the stuff stored in their gets wet quite frequently.
This morning I woke up to water slowly dripping out of the ceiling in our kitchen upstairs - right into my tea cabinet for all places. I wasn't pleased at all!!! Although it was only a very slow drip - easily contained in a small bowl on top of the cabinet, together with the water in the garage I figured we better call someone asap. In hindsight I wish I would have called yesterday - if I had not been too lazy to clean out the garage and go partying downtown Vancouver all night. Anyways, the plumbers showed up at 1pm. Leak was steady and slow. They started to cut holes into the ceiling around the leak - the hole got bigger and bigger and they still could not see where the water was coming from. So they figured it must come from the townhouse above of ours - well that had been obvious right from the start I thought. But of course the upstairs neighbours weren't home - who would be home on a Thursday early afternoon - people work. Luckily they did get a hold of someone and that person showed up shortly after. The plumbers went upstairs and guess what - all hell broke loose. The dripping got constantly worse and the area from which it was dripping got bigger and bigger - following the contours of this frickin huge hole in our ceiling of course. I was running for plenty of towels and many more bowls/buckets pretty much exhausting what we had available (lucky I always keep all those tin cookie cans my mom always sends the Christmas cookies in). It was at least a couple hours of hell before the dripping slowed down - I could hear water running in the walls as well - who knows where that all went and I am sure we might see a few more surprises. The plumber was able to stop the leak upstairs - temporarily. They have to come back to fix it permanently tomorrow - could not shut off the water to the upstairs unit due to a corroded valve. They have to shut of the water to the whole complex when fewer people will be home tomorrow morning. Darn - I am going to miss my spin class because of that after missing my cardio-strength class today already.
Well, it's now 6pm and it's still dripping slowly. Jeff will have to take me out for dinner tonight. The kitchen is still a mess but I am not cleaning it up before I know it's all fix. It just happened that I cleaned the kitchen this Tuesday!!!!!!!!! I am MAD!!!

Vancouver 2010

GO Canada, GO Germany (if not pushing Canadians off the podium) - everybody talks about it on facebook, in the gym or in the pubs. It seems time to put something up on my blog as well.

I went twice already to absorb the atmoshpere. Below are a couple pictures from Downtown Vancouver during the Olympics. Last week Wednesday was a wonderful sunny day. Lots of people in the streets - literally in the streets since most of them are closed to traffic. Many foreign languages and clothes displaying country colors from all over the world. Yesterday I went with a friend in the evening to see the city lit up - it wasn't as nice and dry as last week. Nevertheless, it happened to be a Hockey night and the city was packed - Vancouver was playing Russia in the quarter finals. It looked like almost everyone wore red or something Canadian (I only saw one Russian outfit). Everyone was cheering, the games was displayed on every outdoor screen - of which there are a few - and inside every pub - of which there are many. Russia was considered a real threat to the Canadians making it into the final so everyone was quite anxious - but hey they won!!!! Pretty loud downtown afterwards - and that was only a quarter final!!!!

The Canadian Women's hockey team JUST won the Gold medal in a game against their archrival USA. They scored 48 goals throughout the tournament and really dominated all the other teams. Go figure - well done though!!!

Few things to note about Canada and the Olympics on home turf:

1. Well, there is the weather - we are having one of the warmest February's on record. Good for my paddling, not so good for the events that require snow and cold. I am sure though everyone enjoyed last weeks blue skies and sun shine. Someone said on the radio Vancouver is the only city in the world were one could hold winter and summer Olympics and the weather would be just the same. So true!! That had been known before the IOC approved the Vancouver applications for the games - and nobody can be held responsible for what nature has in store for us. Last winter was very cold and lots of snow.

2. Apparently Canada spent quite a bit of money on it's winter athletes to have a shot at winning the medal count overall ("Owning the Podium"). Well, with only a few days left chances are they won't - not even close. Many people comment negatively on that which I think is wrong. I am VERY impressed with the Canadian performances overall - some disappoint as in every sport and some come up with the big surprises. To really grow a sport - and this is my personal opinion - one needs to start with the grass roots and not just 4 years ahead of the Olympics. Funding the clubs that are involved with the sport so that they can recruit many potential athletes and offer them the best conditions to train (I am not bitching about that BC just cut all their funding for youth sport last week and made it VERY difficult for some sports to grow). You need a BIG pool of athletes to produce the best in the world. One has to have talent that's for sure but having other athletes to train with and constantly challenge each other also goes a long way. Grow the sport and you grow good athletes. Unfortunately Canada has this obsession with hockey and that draws a lot of good athletes away from other sports (I know I am bitching again).

3. Canada never won an Olympic Gold medal on home turf. Darn, I hated the media for putting that type of pressure onto the athletes. Any medal in the Olympic games is a MAJOR achievement. Take Jennifer Heil as an example. She won the first medal for Canada on day 2 which happened to be Silver. I saw her moguls run - she did great (as far as I can tell not knowing nothing about skiing in general never mind moguls), looked like gave all she had - but there just happened to be one other person that performed slightly better than her. She was sooo disappointed not have lived up to the expectation set to her by the nation/media - she shouldn't have been!!! Canada finally did get a gold medal - so all is good now. Actually we are tied with the USA for gold medals. It just happened that the US has a few more off those other colours and currently leads the medal count. But I am cheering for the Germans too and they will take the top spot from USA soon - just wait.

Australia Report - WA Part 2

I guess I should have put up the map in my last post. Well here it is. Start/end in Perth, following the marked route clockwise. Green dots are campsites, red marks paved road, yellow unpaved road and orange are 4x4 tracks.
Trip stats: 22 days & nights, 7522km, ~900l of diesel and 6,397 pictures. And we didn't even get to see half of Western Australia - it's huge!!!!

Day 3/21 (Oct 22, 2009): We were up at 5am again since we had a long drive ahead of us. First though we did a little 4x4 detour thanks to exploreOZ. It actually wasn't a detour but a shortcut but of course you don't really save time going off road. But it was sure worth it. We visited a little national park which never gets mentioned in any travel guide (at least I didn't see it and I researched quite a few): Stockyard Gully National Park which promised us caves to explore. The drive in was through the usual WA low bush - quite a bit of flowers to look at as well. We got to the parking lot of the national park and it didn't look like there would be any caves - the land was a flat as my home country in Germany!!! Ah, but we didn't take into account that you could go DOWN into a ravine or gully in order to get to the caves. While the top was all low bush, the gully was full of good size eucalyptus trees. Apparently a river flows below the surface here. Drovers were bringing their cattle through this area since water was easy to get to being just below the surface (on rainy days it could cause a bit of a problem though if water level rose) - hence the name. We didn't try digging for any water, we brought our own. Following the gully for a couple 100m we saw the cave entrance. It was reasonably big and we just walked into. Not too long and it was pitch dark around us. Thinking ahead we had brought our flash lights. It was pretty cool and we felt like real explorers, crawling on all fours into a small side channel. Didn't get too far or maybe not wanting to trust our small little flash lights too much or maybe were a little bit worried to run into some small little crawly things with many legs. The main cave was getting bigger and bigger and my headlamp wasn't strong enough to light up the ceiling. Continuing on along the main chamber we all sudden saw day light ahead of us. Turned out that we did not get turned around in the dark but that this cave was an actual tunnel. Another cool thing this park had to offer were all the feral bees around the tunnel entrance/exit. You could see their hives very well. Luckily they were high enough up so we didn't bother them. Apparently they can get quite defensive should one get too close. It was barely 8am when we had finished our first hike of the day through Stockyard Gully NP and we hit Brand Hwy to make some time going north. Next stop: Kalbarri National Park. Now this park is mentioned in EVERY travel guide. Our route to the park took us past the Principality of Hutt River - if you thought Australia was an island nation, you would be wrong. Continent Australia's second "largest" country was formed when farmer Leonard Casley, appalled by new government quotas on wheat production, seceded from the Government of Australia on April 20th, 1970. And to this date it is still run as an independent country by Prince Leonard and his Princess Shirley. Apparently they welcome visitors to call on their residence but we skipped it. For us Australia is about natural history and not so much about monarchy. We made it to Kalbarri National Park with plenty of day light left for a long hike along the colorful red and yellow sandstone cliffs with spectacular formations such as "The Grandstands" and "Natural Bridge". The turquoise ocean was ~100m below us while we walked through the flowering bush on the top, watching kangaroos on one side and humpback whales on the other. And surprisingly not too many people around. Well maybe not that surprising as it is off season still in this part of the country - apparently it gets real busy during the Australian "summer/Christmas" holidays. The disadvantage with it being off season though is that it's also the time when most of the park maintenance is done. So again we ran into a road block (this time on foot) where the trail was closed and had to detour around it. Just a minor inconvenience here but in some National Parks many of the trails were closed - but that's the story for another post to come. Did I mention yet that it was REALLY windy again? It also started to cloud over in the afternoon. After our wonderful hike along the cliffs and back we started to look for a campsite. There wasn't any in the park itself so we were forced to stay in town (wild camping is NOT allowed in National Parks) - one of my least favourite campsites but we had worse. The spot we got was small and close to the road with a youth hostel across from it. Pointless to mention that it was pretty loud at night, especially since we crawled into our sleeping bags shortly after sunset while hostel guests usually start waking up at that time.

Day 4/22: Again an early start although we didn't sleep much during the night. The birds didn't care. First we explored a bit more of the coastal part of the park such as "Mushroom Rock" and "Rainbow Valley" in the early morning light. Although the sun wasn't quite in the right location for lighting up the rocks the scenery was great - some nice beaches, 420 million year old Tumbalgooda Sandstone in all shades of yellow to dark red and tube like fossils created by some ancient worms. Next stop was the inland part of the park - the Murchison River Canyon. We did "The Loop" hike -8km- first following along the top of the canyon ridge then down to the river and along its shores. You get to see great coloured cliffs again as well as the main attraction of the park "Nature's Window". When we first got to the start of the hike there were maybe one or two cars in the parking lot since it was still early. We had "Nature's Window" all to ourselves which is only a short hike from the car. After the 3hr hike (we/I took our time taking pictures) we returned back to "Nature's Window" and it was packed with people. It pays to start off early. On our hike we only saw a couple people. It also got REALLY hot once the sun moved up higher into the blue sky. Although the hike was wonderful there was a part which wasn't so much fun ... Flies!!!! Ever heard of the flies in the Australian outback? They can be really annoying. We did bring fly nets of course but they are not 100% fly proof. So by the end of the hike I had at least as many inside the fly net as outside. But those flies inside the net wanted out so they were NOT trying to get into my eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Without the net, that's where those bastards would be. We stopped at a couple other attraction of the park such as Z-Bend, Eagles Lookout and Ross Graham Lookout. All great sites with spectacular canyon views but also all infested with millions of flies. Not all tourists were fortunate enough to bring fly nets. Needless to say, we skipped the idea of going for a swim in the river. Saying our goodbyes to Kalbarri NP we hit the main hwy again on our way to Monkey Mia Reserve (the next big tourist attraction hundreds of kilometers north - distances are unbelievable vast here in mid WA). Along the way the green bush we were so used to by now gave way to a more arid vegetation of thorn bushes and spinifix grass. As for animals, we mostly saw feral goats - one of WA's biggest problem since they eat everything and endanger the native wildlife. Them, foxes and feral cats are the least loved animals in WA, wiping out the local mamal population such as Bilbies. Remember the fence they build a long time ago to keep out the rabbits? Well they are still building fences these days (saying they are better build) to keep out foxes, wild cats and goats to reintroduce native species - the Peron Peninsula in Shark Bay Marine Park is one of those areas. We spend the night in Nanga at a big private resort & campground right on the beach with hardly any guests. We managed a quick dip in the ocean followed by a dip in the pool to refresh ourselves after the long hot drive before the sun disappeared. Beautiful sunset once more.

Day 5/23: Today's program started with watching the "wild" dolphins swim to the beach at Monkey Mia Reserve, together with about 50 other tourists. Every morning between 7:30 and 10am Australian Bottlenose Dolphins swim right up to the beach where they get fed by a couple rangers - only the females and only a selected few animals each time. Kinda cool to be so close to the animals but one doesn't really get the feeling of seeing a "wild" animal. Never mind it is the animals choice to show up and they sometimes don't. We didn't stick around too much longer but went on to discover other parts of this beautiful peninsula and Shark Bay Marine Park which is by the way listed as a World Heritage site. We stopped in at a lookout called Eagle Bluff with stunning views over the turquoise ocean. The water is so clear you can see the bottom from 100m up high - oh and you can see the fish swimming through the clear shallows such as turtles and SHARKS. Not just one but multiple ones. We were hoping to see some Dugongs as well (the Australian Manatee) but no such luck. Even the German/Austrian tourist with their high magnifying telescope didn't get to see them. But the view alone was worth it hanging out for a while. Next stop, Shell Beach - masses of tiny shells have been accumulating here for 4000 years to build a beach in places up to 5m deep and 50-100m wide. These shells are unique to the extremely salty waters in Shark Bay. Another unique site are the Stromatolites in Hamelin Bay. Apparently those brown rocklike small mounts have been build by the oldest living organism on earth - cyanobacteria. These only strive in extremely salty water - hence Hamelin Bay is one of the few and best known places in the world where they can be found. Sounds exciting but they really don't look like much :-). The rest of the day was spent, again, with a lot of driving. We stopped in Carnarvon for the night - our next destination was still another 200km further north. Driving at night isn't really recommended unless you need the adrenaline rush of seeing kangaroos run out in front of your car every few kilometers and risk paying the rental car company a lot of money to get the car fixed. There is LOTS of roadkill on the highways. Carnarvon is known for its fruit and vegetable plantations, due to it's location right on the mouth of the Gascogne River - the river by the way was a river of red sand when we crossed it the next morning :-)

Australia Report - WA Part 1

Taking a break from watching the Olympics. Not that I am overly interested in winter sports but somehow all the excitement around me has caught on. Time to remember some of the sunny days though :-)

Day 1/19 (Oct 20, 2009): We had to get up early (5:30am) to get to the airport in time for our morning flight to Perth, WA. Darren gave us a ride again - not minding at all the 3hrs it would take out of his day. The flight itself was uneventful but long - 5hrs to cross the country from east to west. We picked up our rental car, a Nissan Patrol truck - quite a bit bigger than our Blazer - with manual transmission and the stirring wheel on the wrong side. But Jeff handled it like a Pro right from the start - except for the occasional use of the windshield wiper instead of the signal. The weather in WA was fabulous - no need for windshield wipers. Blue sky, warm and of course windy. The first day was mostly spent with getting ready for our trip, buying some essential gear for camping such as fuel and chairs and large water canisters, stocking up on food and getting a National Park Pass for WA (which we had to get downtown Perth - Jeff didn't appreciate testing his driving skills first thing in downtown Perth - good thing we had the GPS!!!!). By the time we left greater Perth going north we also hit rush hour traffic. More swearing from my driver. Luckily traffic didn't last long and soon enough we were speeding down the 4 lane highway which narrow down to 2 lanes shortly after. Jeff off course asked were to next but except for the general direction north I hadn't really made any plans for night #1 since I didn't know when we would be leaving Perth. So I just said keep driving till we find a campground. We followed route 60 for a while through nothing but bush until we turned off towards Yanchep and the ocean. I though there should be tons of campgrounds but no such luck. Even our GPS showed nothing in the area. But we did have a look at the Indian Ocean - NICE. We just kept driving until we came to a pull off along the road. From there a small, sandy track led into the bush and we thought maybe this would lead us to the ocean to camp on a wonderful white beach for the first night. We kept on driving for quite a while but the ocean wasn't getting any closer it seems (we needed to get used to the scale of the GPS - although I was positively surprised that the track showed up on our special map - it cost enough). It was all single lane track through low bush with a couple spots were people seemed to have turned off. As it was getting closer to sunset but not to the ocean we decided to just pull off at the next possible spot and set up camp for the night. We really didn't know where we were and if we would find the highway again in the morning. But hey, we were in the middle of the beautiful Australian bush with no neighbours but kangaroos and emus. It was very cool and we felt very adventurous -spoiled city people as we are. It got dark by 7pm and we crawled into our tent shortly after.

Day 2/20: Going to bed before 8pm really means waking up at 5am isn't so bad. Actually that's already sleeping in. The birds woke us before the sun was up at first light. It was a bit cool out still but otherwise promised to be another great day. We took our time with breakfast and I walked around a bit to enjoy the myriad of flowers all around us - WA is known for its flowers in the spring. Nevertheless we were on the road by 6am traveling towards Lancelin, the start of our first 4x4 adventure. Finding the sealed road again wasn't a problem. On the way we got to see our first emus in the fields along the highway. Pretty cool although not pretty birds. Other wildlife we saw on the drive were a couple kangaroos and a flock of black cockatoos. Of course we had to stop for pictures every time we saw something. So it took a little bit longer to get to Lancelin but hey, we got another 21 days in WA and today's route was relatively short. Lancelin was the start of the so called "Wedge Island Beach Run" - a 4x4 adventure I researched off the Internet (http://www.exploroz.com/TrekNotes/Default.aspx - great website for planning trips). It was supposed to be a "short" drive along the beach all the way up to Crevantes, home of the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park. Jeff and I had done some limited off-road driving in BC being used to rock and mud. Pretty, white, soft sand is a whole different story though. It didn't take long until we felt like we would get stuck trying to get onto the beach. Although the beach itself was nice and hard sand, there were some soft sand dunes to navigate to get there. And of course we didn't have a tire gauge or air compressor and the cell phone we purchased in Sydney had NO reception in this area. So we would have had no way of calling for help should we get stuck. Therefore we decided to not press our luck too much on day 2 and rather pick an inland track to get to Cervantes. There are tons of tracks in that area going north, most of them single lanes, a mix of sandy and rocky bottom. Unfortunately navigating those millions of tracks wasn't easy either without having a detailed map, which we thought we didn't need following the ocean - dah. Our GPS was a great help showing us some of the tracks but it wasn't easy to see how far they went north or if they just dropped us onto the beach again. Knowing the general direction all the time was priceless though. Nevertheless we were back tracking a few times. And the going was slow!!! The tracks took us through some wonderful bush and we stopped a couple times to look at the ocean and even go for our first little dip (water was coooold though). Lots of emus and kangaroos to take a pictures off. Not a single car or person. Saw our first bobtail - a small lizard who likes to just sit in the middle of the trail and hiss at oncoming cars rather than move out of the way. Bit suicidal animals if you ask me - we saw a lot of them during our trip through WA. Eventually we made it to Wedge Island - a small community on the coast in the middle of nowhere. Really weird though - we saw a lot of shacks but not a sole around. No humans, no dogs, nothing moved except sand and bushes being blown by the wind. If you know the movie "The Hills have Eyes" you know what we felt like. From here on we were supposed to follow a solid, hard packed 2-lane dirt road all the way to the Pinnacles. We had little problems finding the road - it was huge compared to the tracks - BUT not far from "town" the road going north was closed due to construction. We tried to ignore the signs "Absolutely No Entry - Danger" (I could always have use my German to play dumb) but when we hit heavy machinery and parts of missing road, we had to admit defeat and turn around. We tried unsuccessfully to find the old single lane track which according to our GPS and the info I had from ExploreOZ should be there - somewhere. No such luck. Fortunately, the dirt road did continue on west and we followed it towards the sealed highway. And instead of another 10-15km on hard packed dirt road to reach our destination, we had to do a nearly 80km detour to get to Nambung National Park. We arrived around 2pm with lots of time to explore the Pinnacles dessert on foot. Sandstone pillars as high as 4m formed by erosion through wind surrounded by sand in the middle of the WA bush. And it was VERY windy that day - I almost lost my hat. Although we weren't there for sunset, the colours were stunning. We were also lucky that the tour bus full of Japanese tourist just left just when we arrived. So not too many people were around to spoil the serene beauty of the place. After exploring the park we followed the highway up north to find a camp for the night. With the help of our GPS we found a quiet and simple private campground in Green Head. A short walk from there got us to the ocean where we watched our first sunset on the west coast of Australia. We had dinner in the dark - the nice thing about organized camping is that they usually have a kitchen areas with lights, tables and BBQ/gas stoves. In bed just past 8pm again.

Australia Report - NSW Part 2

Sorry for the long delay in getting posts up but I figured I had to send out a couple resumes. What a waste of time though.

More pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/krade1709/AustraliaNewSouthWales319Oct2009

Day 7 (Oct 8, 2009): The drive to the Illawarra County was nice. The road went through eucalyptus forest before we dropped down the escarpment to Bulli to drop of Neville and then continue on to Wollongong to drop off the boats onto the trailer and pick up the VanDusen K2 Jeff and I were supposed to try. We continued the drive along the coast and Illawarra Lake to Minnamurra - a small community in the Kiama district, approx 120km south of Sydney. What a place. Darren's house is right on a small side arm of the Minnamurra River - although it's tidal and boat access is only possible at high tide. Nevertheless, a short walk from the house is a boat launch that provides access at any time. And from there it is only a short paddle out onto the ocean - although I would not have made it through the break on such a windy day. The other river bank is all national park (Killalea NP) - and a short walk from there through the bush gets you to a great surfing beach. BEAUTIFUL!!!! These are areas you only get to see if you know the locals. Thanks Darren!!! We went out for dinner to the local golf club with Darren, his wife Michelle, daughter Rachel and boyfriend (at the time) Ben. Michelle's and Darren's two boys, Mitchell and Brandon, stayed home. Darren had another nice surprise for us - we got to sleep in "our" own townhouse - well, it was Darren and Michelle's townhouse of course but they hadn't moved into it yet. They are in the process of moving from their house on the side arm of the river to a house right on the river which wasn't build yet. The townhouse will be their in between accommodation. But for tonight it was Jeff's and mine and each of us had our own bathroom!!!

Day 8: Ah, it was still blowing hard but sunny when we woke up. Neville showed up at 8am and we walked the boats to the river - it took less than 1min. Jeff and I had the VanDusen K2. I looked at the chop on the river which wasn't too bad but the gusts were hitting us pretty hard. The VanDusen felt MUCH better than the Nelo - although we were leaning pretty bad to the right. That was fixed once Jeff straightened his seat out. Someone must have used the boat with the seat being 3cm higher on one side than the other. Not sure how he didn't hurt his back sitting like that until we fixed it. We, Darren in his K1, Neville in surf ski and us, went upstream. The river narrowed after some time which also got us out of the wind - finally. It was very scenic. Rainbows, hills in the distance, Australian bush and mangroves along the river. And despite the wind, Jeff and I did okay in the VanDusen - although to be able to race it we would have to get rid of the wind. We paddled an easy 12km that morning and crossed over to the national park at the end to have a peak at the beach. The guys were running across through the bush - STUPID. Sure, it started to cloud over but the promise of rain was never enough to make me run. The beach was beautiful and eerie at the same time - a bit like storm watching in Tofino. After our paddle Darren made us a great breakfast before we headed back to Wollongong to meet Gary - another of our Aussie friends from Edmonton. He was giving us a ride to Narrabeen, some 10km north of Sydney, where we were visiting David and his wife Carol. We never met those guys before but David is the twin brother of a good friend of ours from Vancouver Island. So they were happy to entertain us for a couple days. They had the pizza already on the table when we arrived and we spent a wonderful evening chatting away, petting the dogs Kudo and Bluey and cat Purdy. And what did we chat about? You might have guessed it already, David is of course an avid paddler himself. So he invited us for a 6am surf ski paddle the next morning.

Day 9: 5am came early. It was still dark and it was raining and it was actually cold and I didn't bring any of the neoprene stuff with me to paddle in. So I wasn't too sad when David changed the plan on us. He still went on his surf ski paddle with some big guns (such as Tim Jacobs and Dean Gardner) we could have never kept up with in these conditions even in a double and Jeff and I stayed in bed for another 2 hrs - how nice!!!! We got up with Carol and the two dogs and one cat and went to explore Narrabeen. Narrabeen is part of the Northern Beaches region. It's a smallish community on a beach as well as a large lake that opens up to the ocean. And on that lake one of the biggest canoe & kayak clubs in NSW. Some good sprint paddlers come from the Manly-Warringa Canoe Club. And of course there were people in K-boats out training on the lake. On Sundays they have a mini-race series around the lake, 12km - for which David holds the course record of 50 odd minutes - that's FLYING. Once David returned from his paddle we went to Manly Beach to watch the Surf Life Saving competition, part of the World Masters Games. There are multiple event going on such as surf ski, board, swim, run and surf boats. The later are huge open water rowing boats with 4 rowers and a steers person. All water bound races are fairly short but ALWAYS goes through the surf out and in. Pretty cool to watch and the weather which started out cool and cloudy turned into sunny with some spectacular storm clouds off-shore. We ran into Darren, Gary and Rob, our friends from Illawarra who were racing and eeach had medaled in some of the events. On the way back to Narrabeen we took the scenic route along the northern beaches such as Dee Why and Long Reef having lunch somewhere along one of those. Man the Aussies are spoiled with nice beaches!!!!! In the afternoon, Jeff and I took out a couple of David's K1 - he brought them with him from South Africa so you can imagine their vintage appearance. Did I mention already that David has to walk 100 steps to a little creek where he can launch his boats to paddle into Narrabeen Lake and from their into the ocean? Those Aussies know how to pick their places to live!!!! Jeff took a Cleaver X and I tried a boat called Lizard. Oh man, I could NOT keep that lizard upright - okay I didn't go swimming BUT I was wobbling side to side like Jeff in his best days and it hurt my back. So we ended up both using the Cleaver x for a quick 20-30min spin instead. We finished off the day with indian food, beer and wine at David's and Carol's place.

Day 10: We woke up to heavy rain and the sound of David loading up his surf ski again. We lounged around in bed for another hour before getting up and taking David's K1's for another spin. The rain had stopped. This time I took his marathon K1 - no idea what brand/style it was - which was a touch more stable than the Lizard. We managed to paddle around Narrabeen Lake trying to avoid, not always successfully, all the shallow spots. Besides a few portages and lots of bracing on my side it was a nice paddle. Afterwards David, Carol, Jeff and I all went for a HUGE breakfast at a nearby cafe (the most expensive breakfast I ever had but it was tasty - going out is not cheap in OZ) before driving north into Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park known for Australian bush walks and Aborigine carvings. David is an arborist and we learned a lot about the different trees and seeds on the walk through the bush. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the wallabies that call the park their home. The weather turned from overcast to rain on us again. When we returned back to Narrabeen it was time to say good bye to Carol and David and we took the bus into Sydney followed by train back to Penrith. Awesome two days, thanks to Carol, David, Bluey, Kudo and Purdy. Back in "our" cabin in Penrith Alex and Leah surprised us with chicken stir-fry for dinner.

Day 11: Another day waking up to parrots - it was sunny but relatively cool. We had to move cabins one last time into the 12 person villa Darren arranged for all the paddlers for the duration of the games. Jeff and I did a quick paddle on the Nepean River which was almost crowded with paddlers - official training day for the marathon event tomorrow. Since the WMG were already in full swing we decided to go to the Olympic Park with Alex (who was competing in the swimming events) and Leah (support) to check out some other events. Not much else to see though. The athletic stadium was nearly empty except for a couple females practicing high jump - not very successfully. We watch a couple volleyball matches which were good caliber. Overall, not much and we didn't last long before returning to Penrith. The cabin started to fill up. Darren arrived, then Rob, his wife Margret and Neville. All of us went for dinner at the local sport club "Panthers" featuring several restaurants. Our favorite pick was a place called "Carvers" - quasi buffet style food - tasty, good portions and affordable since it was self-serve. Darren is, like me, a huge chocolate fan and I kid you not he arrived with TONS of treats. So we had chocolate for dessert after returning to the cabin.

Day 12-17: These are the racing days during the world masters games. A full report can already be found here: http://burnabylake.com/blog/2009/12/wmg-report-by-katja.html. After the racing was done we headed back to Minnamurra for another day before flying to Western Australia.

Day 18: First "official" day of our vacation. It was a beautiful sunny day and Darren woke us early to - guess what - go for a paddle. This time we took surf skis/ocean skis instead of sprint boats and headed for the ocean. It was quite calm out there with a very low swell and some light wind chop. Nothing out of the ordinary but for whatever reason I could not get comfortable in the Robberg I borrowed from Darren. Jeff was in an even tippier ski - what we call a spec ski while the Aussies call it surf ski. For Australians a surf ski is an ocean ski. We made it all the way into Kiama harbour. Darren even paddled into the blow hole it was so calm - Jeff and I chickened out on this. We left the skis on the beach and went for ice cream in town. Very good start to our vacation. On the paddle back Darren tried to teach Jeff how to start a Surf Life Saving race by jumping onto the ski. I am sure Jeff hurt baddly afterward. After having lunch with Darren and Michelle at a cool place high up the cliff with great views over the coast line and beaches, they took us to the back country - Kangaroo Valley, one of their favorite camping spots. It was really scenic and to my surprise, we even got to see a "wild" wombat feeding on the fresh grass of the camp ground. It was tame enough to be petted. Back in Minnamurra, we spent half the night packing - staying again in the empty townhouse which offered lots of space to make a mess. The idea was to leave our paddling gear with Darren and squeeze everything we need for the next 6 weeks - clothes, tent, sleeping back, therma rest, cooking gear... - into our two backpacks. We did succeed and stayed below the allowed 18kg as well. Oh, I should mention the awesome prawns we had for dinner - huge and tasty!!!