Monday, September 26, 2005
a lucky kat.
what a lucky girl I am to have such good friends and family. Here I am, less than 3 weeks in a foreign country, and on my birthday I wake up to a homemade birthday cake, I am sent a homegrown rendition of happy birthday on the guitar, I get a birthday card, a birthday phone call, a many other birthday greetings. you are all wonderful!
this past week was a good one too. I found an ultimate team, participated in my first disc golf tournament, and tried to take out the lights on another squash court.
it started with monday. monday wasn't exciting. moving on.
tuesday. I went to my first disc golf practice with real disc golfs. I tried to throw a couple of them once before, but this was this first time I didn't give up straight away and go back to the ultrastar. eventually a security guard came around and told us we couldn't play anymore. he said there had been complaints. the little group of spectators that had formed protested on our behalves but we were only granted permission to play on a big open field which really wasn't nearly so interesting.
wednesday. I had seen on a website that there was ultimate down by the airport. So I biked down there as darkness descended (luckily there was a pretty good bike route most of the way). I found the field, which was large and lit and seemed like a good place to play. I saw a group of rugby players. And that's about it. I biked up the hill where there were more lights - that was a driving range. It was now around 6:30 and the games were supposed to start at 6. And then I saw 3 people sitting on the field. Something told me they were ulti players. And I was right! Slowly they showed up and I started tossing a disc with someone and much later the beginnings of organization appeared. I found a team in need of girls (as I suspected, it wasn't hard), and had a good game.
thursday. I couldn't believe the amount of muscle soreness I experienced from the running and throwing of the previous 2 days. Just biking to work was rather excruciating.
friday. after work I met a guy that I had met on, believe it or not, an online dating site :). I had better make sure I make it clear to him that I am not so much interested in dating him, but we had a good time playing squash anyhow. he also insisted that my home country is named (or should be named) "Canadia" and thought that disc golf sounded like a ridiculous sport - a bit of a nutter, but he seemed nice enough. as in my previous (limited) experiences in a squash court, I managed to hit the lights multiple times and hit the ball compeletly out of the court twice.
saturday morning I went down to wander around the botanical gardens and look at the flying foxes (maybe some pictures will appear in my gallery soon?), then to the art gallery, then to see some street performers down by the waterfront. I then wandered across town and managed to find the neighbourhood of Redfern, where I asked a few random people on the street where the street I was looking for was and got blank looks from most of them. I forget the name of the street now, but the reason I was looking for it was that that was where kurt and his wife live. kurt is the swedish disc golf fanatic I had met the previous weekend. And the reason I was going to his hosue was to get a ride down to Canberra for the tournament. what a funny way to say that. anyhow, I managed to find his house and just about right on time as well, and soon we were a carload headed to the ACT (Austrlian Capitol Territory). though it was too dark to see any of the scenery and too cloudy to see many stars, the ride proved to be a bit of an adventure. we were merrily zooming along the highway at around 110km/hr when suddenly everything went dark. no headlights. none of us had ever had such a thing happen before. luckily, there wasn't too much traffic, no kangaroos in our path, and the emergency flashers still worked. we pulled over and had a look at some fuses but couldn't really find anything wrong, though it was hard to tell with only the light from my little headlamp. luckily again, we were only 2km from an exit and a town, so we slowly crept down the shoulder and pulled in to a gas station. after fruitless consultation of an electrical wiring diagram and the largely erased lid of the fuse relay panel, we made a call to roadside assistance. an hour and a half of gas station merriment pursued before a scruffy man pulled up in a truck to take a look. as it turned out, we were on the right track with the fuses, and by pulling a fuse from the A/C he managed to get the lights going again.
sunday morning after a tour of kurt's inlaws' solar-powered house, we were off to the park. I didn't really know what to expect and was a little bit nervous about the tournament. I definitely didn't expect to do very well given my experience with throwing disc golf discs on tuesday. and everyone I played with could immediately tell I was normally an ultimate player based on the way I threw. We were divided into groups of four and assigned a starting basket (the targets in disc golf are baskets, not holes like in regular golf). we then went through playing an 18-basket course before lunch. With some wild and uncontrolled throws, I ended up with a fairly dismal score of 102 on the par-70 course. At lunch I went off to do some practicing and finally really started to get the hang of how to throw relatively straight. I also practiced a little putting, which is rather difficult since you had to throw high enough and hard enough to land in the basket and yet try to avoid the back-and-forth that can come from missing the target. by the time the second round began (using the same baskets but with completely different tee-off points so that the course was completely changed), I was starting to feel like I had a chance at competing. well, as it turned out I did do Much better (82/par 69), but still did not have sufficient consistency to keep up with everyone else. but now I was really excited about disc golf and eager to play again - I think I am hooked! on the way home, I saw the famous Lake George, we discussed appalling uses of grammar (particularly apostrophes), found "flavour" in orange juice and subway sandwiches, and learned some new Aussie lingo. The biggest discovery was the -o suffix, which seems to be nearly as popular as -ie/-y (Chrissy, Rellies, Aussie, Tassie): common examples include servo (service station/gas station), agro (aggressive), and mando (mandatory).
well, that covers my week. another one is now underway. I think I will treat myself to a birthday dinner at the tasty thai place I was introduced to by Amber and Norbert a couple of weeks ago.
happy trails!
kat
this past week was a good one too. I found an ultimate team, participated in my first disc golf tournament, and tried to take out the lights on another squash court.
it started with monday. monday wasn't exciting. moving on.
tuesday. I went to my first disc golf practice with real disc golfs. I tried to throw a couple of them once before, but this was this first time I didn't give up straight away and go back to the ultrastar. eventually a security guard came around and told us we couldn't play anymore. he said there had been complaints. the little group of spectators that had formed protested on our behalves but we were only granted permission to play on a big open field which really wasn't nearly so interesting.
wednesday. I had seen on a website that there was ultimate down by the airport. So I biked down there as darkness descended (luckily there was a pretty good bike route most of the way). I found the field, which was large and lit and seemed like a good place to play. I saw a group of rugby players. And that's about it. I biked up the hill where there were more lights - that was a driving range. It was now around 6:30 and the games were supposed to start at 6. And then I saw 3 people sitting on the field. Something told me they were ulti players. And I was right! Slowly they showed up and I started tossing a disc with someone and much later the beginnings of organization appeared. I found a team in need of girls (as I suspected, it wasn't hard), and had a good game.
thursday. I couldn't believe the amount of muscle soreness I experienced from the running and throwing of the previous 2 days. Just biking to work was rather excruciating.
friday. after work I met a guy that I had met on, believe it or not, an online dating site :). I had better make sure I make it clear to him that I am not so much interested in dating him, but we had a good time playing squash anyhow. he also insisted that my home country is named (or should be named) "Canadia" and thought that disc golf sounded like a ridiculous sport - a bit of a nutter, but he seemed nice enough. as in my previous (limited) experiences in a squash court, I managed to hit the lights multiple times and hit the ball compeletly out of the court twice.
saturday morning I went down to wander around the botanical gardens and look at the flying foxes (maybe some pictures will appear in my gallery soon?), then to the art gallery, then to see some street performers down by the waterfront. I then wandered across town and managed to find the neighbourhood of Redfern, where I asked a few random people on the street where the street I was looking for was and got blank looks from most of them. I forget the name of the street now, but the reason I was looking for it was that that was where kurt and his wife live. kurt is the swedish disc golf fanatic I had met the previous weekend. And the reason I was going to his hosue was to get a ride down to Canberra for the tournament. what a funny way to say that. anyhow, I managed to find his house and just about right on time as well, and soon we were a carload headed to the ACT (Austrlian Capitol Territory). though it was too dark to see any of the scenery and too cloudy to see many stars, the ride proved to be a bit of an adventure. we were merrily zooming along the highway at around 110km/hr when suddenly everything went dark. no headlights. none of us had ever had such a thing happen before. luckily, there wasn't too much traffic, no kangaroos in our path, and the emergency flashers still worked. we pulled over and had a look at some fuses but couldn't really find anything wrong, though it was hard to tell with only the light from my little headlamp. luckily again, we were only 2km from an exit and a town, so we slowly crept down the shoulder and pulled in to a gas station. after fruitless consultation of an electrical wiring diagram and the largely erased lid of the fuse relay panel, we made a call to roadside assistance. an hour and a half of gas station merriment pursued before a scruffy man pulled up in a truck to take a look. as it turned out, we were on the right track with the fuses, and by pulling a fuse from the A/C he managed to get the lights going again.
sunday morning after a tour of kurt's inlaws' solar-powered house, we were off to the park. I didn't really know what to expect and was a little bit nervous about the tournament. I definitely didn't expect to do very well given my experience with throwing disc golf discs on tuesday. and everyone I played with could immediately tell I was normally an ultimate player based on the way I threw. We were divided into groups of four and assigned a starting basket (the targets in disc golf are baskets, not holes like in regular golf). we then went through playing an 18-basket course before lunch. With some wild and uncontrolled throws, I ended up with a fairly dismal score of 102 on the par-70 course. At lunch I went off to do some practicing and finally really started to get the hang of how to throw relatively straight. I also practiced a little putting, which is rather difficult since you had to throw high enough and hard enough to land in the basket and yet try to avoid the back-and-forth that can come from missing the target. by the time the second round began (using the same baskets but with completely different tee-off points so that the course was completely changed), I was starting to feel like I had a chance at competing. well, as it turned out I did do Much better (82/par 69), but still did not have sufficient consistency to keep up with everyone else. but now I was really excited about disc golf and eager to play again - I think I am hooked! on the way home, I saw the famous Lake George, we discussed appalling uses of grammar (particularly apostrophes), found "flavour" in orange juice and subway sandwiches, and learned some new Aussie lingo. The biggest discovery was the -o suffix, which seems to be nearly as popular as -ie/-y (Chrissy, Rellies, Aussie, Tassie): common examples include servo (service station/gas station), agro (aggressive), and mando (mandatory).
well, that covers my week. another one is now underway. I think I will treat myself to a birthday dinner at the tasty thai place I was introduced to by Amber and Norbert a couple of weeks ago.
happy trails!
kat
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