As the crow flies

Sydney

Well I'm leaving Australia tomorrow to fly home on a 13.5hour flight - ugh. I just had a 13hr bus ride to Sydney a couple of days ago which actually didn't seem that long, perhaps because we stopped twice for 30 minutes and I slept for 6 hours.

Sydney kind of reminds me of Vancouver, maybe a combination of Vancouver and Toronto. Its a nice city, good to walk around in and explore. There is this $10 CD store where all the CDs are $10, so I bought the latest Dave Matthews CD.

We spent a few days in a place called Byron Bay. We basically just relaxed at the beach. Finally there was some good surf so of course I went. The board that I hired was probably the nicest I have ever ridden. It was an Australian made 7'6". I went out in the morning since the swell is best then. I had this one ride which was just awesome. It is rides like that why I love surfing. You see this wave coming and you paddle and you're on the top of it looking down the wave face and then you stand up and then drop down the face of the wave and then beside you is this wall of green water and its like 5 ft tall and you're just riding along.

...and then something happens, like the wave breaks and dumps on you and you're engulfed in white water and your board hits your elbow and your arm goes numb and when you get in to shore your tricep is bleeding because the fin of your board cut it, but you just had an awesome ride so you want to go out again. That's what I love about surfing so much. When the water is warm enough so you don't need a wetsuit that is great too, but the benefit of the wetsuit is you don't need to sunscreen yourself so often. That's one thing I'm not going to miss - sunscreening myself everyday. Without sunscreen you burn in 30 minutes. You can feel your skin burning without sunscreen.

The weather in Byron was kind of interesting as it would be so hot during the day and then around 4 or 5 the dark clouds would roll in and there would be a thunderstorm with raining pouring down (like it does in November in Vancouver) for a half hour or hour, and then it will be sunny with a perfectly blue sky. We got caught in one of these as we were riding bikes out to the most easterly point in mainland Australia. We got soaked, but it was nice to cool off from the heat.

I think that's all there is to write.

posted by Aaron @ 6:54 PM