quick update
I'm officially bad at posting. Every time I come to the computer lab I spend the whole time catching up on my sports reading ( gtsports.blogspot.com , chazsports.blogspot.com , and Bill Simmons on ESPN.com's Page2 ) and talking on AIM. So sorry I haven't been updating.
I'm in Melbourne now (pronounced Melbun) in an apartment with 5 guys. It's pretty much like an apartment of four because one guy spends all his time with his girlfriend (not that it's a bad thing, just he has a motivation to not sit on the couch all day). We are buying and cooking our own food, which is turning out better than you would expect for four guys. Kevin is pretty much our cooking/cleaning leader, mostly because the other three of us our lazy. And because Seth broke things like the first 5 times he did anything in the kitchen. We have cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and various delicious dinners including: fetucine alfredo, steak with sauteed peppers, onions, and mushrooms, pizza with the aforementioned vegetables and pepperoni, chicken fajitas, and chicken enchiladas. We eat about a loaf of bread per day between four people.
We have definitely had some fun times here. Spontaneous haircuts, road trips, and other shennanigans. The road trip occurred this weekend down the Great Ocean Road. Lindsay, Emily, and Owen went in one car, and Seth, Clark, and I went in the other. We tried to rent a van, but they don't rent vans to anyone under 25, so we had to go with 2 cars. We spent all of Saturday driving down the road, stopping at various tourist attractions along the coast. After lunch, we decided we'd stop at the next good beach to swim and hang out. The road then turned away from the coast, and after seeing the 12 Apostles (a rock formation, not the actual apostles) and other sightseeing attractions, we pulled over at a random stop where we saw a surfer. He told us there weren't any waves, but he had just gone for a swim. We decided to stop here even though we wouldn't get in any good body surfing. It was pretty cold and windy on the beach, but we had changed into our swimsuits, so we didn't want to be denied. Clark has a nice video of Seth, Owen, and I running into the water and falling off a 1 foot drop just before we were going to dive into the waves. Good times.
After we got out of the water (which wasn't really that cold), Owen wanted to try out Seth's new football (the kind they use for Aussie rules football, the greatest game ever. Besides basketball of course.). We set up some goals using driftwood and tried our best to make a field. The first teams were Owen and Clark against me and Seth. We got destroyed. Both Seth and I are big and slow, while Clark is smaller and quicker, and Owen is bigger and quicker. Some of you may have heard use of the phrase "so big and so fast" to describe me, but this most certainly does not apply in the sand. All my juking and jiving amounted to standing still. We fought valiantly, but the score was probably something like 73-34. After a quick swim for halftime, we switched to Clark and Seth against Owen and me. Seth was tired and didn't want to play, but we convinced him to play to 4 goals. Seth and Clark jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead despite my team's size advantage. I told Owen that he needed to guard Clark because I was too slow. We quickly rattled off two goals to make it 3-2. After a few close calls for either team, Owen and I crafted a nice possession that left him with an easy kick right in front of their goal. 3-3. We traded close calls again and then "the greatest athletic achievement of my life". (Not really. I would definitely put my Intramural basketball above this. And of course the real greatest achievement: getting body-slammed by Chris Wilcox after basketball practice.) Anyway, back to the game. We had the ball deep in our own end, and Owen decided to go for the gold. Since the field was so small, we could pretty much punt it in from anywhere, and he tried a long kick. The kick was a little short and off to the side, and because we were playing on sand, it didn't roll at all. I had been running out for a pass, and found myself in a footrace with Clark to get to the ball. Just before he got to the ball, I slid in and booted it just inside the near post for the winning goal. The crowd went wild, and I took a victory lap in the ocean to wash off the sand.
We went back into town for dinner (pretty good Italian pizza/pasta place) and then headed back to the beach to spend the night. When we got there, the moon was low in the sky and behind clouds. The beach was almost in total darkness. Luckily, I had my flashlight. (Good ol' Boy Scouts) We sat on the beach for a few hours drinking wine and talking. It was really fun. Once the moon came out over the dune, it was actually pretty bright out. After the wine was gone, we went to sleep in the car. We had three people in each car, so two slept in the reclined front seats and the third slept across the back seat. It wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but we got pretty decent sleep anyway. We took the shorter, less-scenic highway home the next morning and made it home for lunch.
So that's the report from Melbourne. I'll try to go back and update the past weeks and events, but as I started off, I'm bad at posting. And if any of you are cold back home, just remember, I have three summers in a row. I miss you all, probably more than I show it, and I'm lookin forward to seeing everyone. Later dudes.
I'm in Melbourne now (pronounced Melbun) in an apartment with 5 guys. It's pretty much like an apartment of four because one guy spends all his time with his girlfriend (not that it's a bad thing, just he has a motivation to not sit on the couch all day). We are buying and cooking our own food, which is turning out better than you would expect for four guys. Kevin is pretty much our cooking/cleaning leader, mostly because the other three of us our lazy. And because Seth broke things like the first 5 times he did anything in the kitchen. We have cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and various delicious dinners including: fetucine alfredo, steak with sauteed peppers, onions, and mushrooms, pizza with the aforementioned vegetables and pepperoni, chicken fajitas, and chicken enchiladas. We eat about a loaf of bread per day between four people.
We have definitely had some fun times here. Spontaneous haircuts, road trips, and other shennanigans. The road trip occurred this weekend down the Great Ocean Road. Lindsay, Emily, and Owen went in one car, and Seth, Clark, and I went in the other. We tried to rent a van, but they don't rent vans to anyone under 25, so we had to go with 2 cars. We spent all of Saturday driving down the road, stopping at various tourist attractions along the coast. After lunch, we decided we'd stop at the next good beach to swim and hang out. The road then turned away from the coast, and after seeing the 12 Apostles (a rock formation, not the actual apostles) and other sightseeing attractions, we pulled over at a random stop where we saw a surfer. He told us there weren't any waves, but he had just gone for a swim. We decided to stop here even though we wouldn't get in any good body surfing. It was pretty cold and windy on the beach, but we had changed into our swimsuits, so we didn't want to be denied. Clark has a nice video of Seth, Owen, and I running into the water and falling off a 1 foot drop just before we were going to dive into the waves. Good times.
After we got out of the water (which wasn't really that cold), Owen wanted to try out Seth's new football (the kind they use for Aussie rules football, the greatest game ever. Besides basketball of course.). We set up some goals using driftwood and tried our best to make a field. The first teams were Owen and Clark against me and Seth. We got destroyed. Both Seth and I are big and slow, while Clark is smaller and quicker, and Owen is bigger and quicker. Some of you may have heard use of the phrase "so big and so fast" to describe me, but this most certainly does not apply in the sand. All my juking and jiving amounted to standing still. We fought valiantly, but the score was probably something like 73-34. After a quick swim for halftime, we switched to Clark and Seth against Owen and me. Seth was tired and didn't want to play, but we convinced him to play to 4 goals. Seth and Clark jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead despite my team's size advantage. I told Owen that he needed to guard Clark because I was too slow. We quickly rattled off two goals to make it 3-2. After a few close calls for either team, Owen and I crafted a nice possession that left him with an easy kick right in front of their goal. 3-3. We traded close calls again and then "the greatest athletic achievement of my life". (Not really. I would definitely put my Intramural basketball above this. And of course the real greatest achievement: getting body-slammed by Chris Wilcox after basketball practice.) Anyway, back to the game. We had the ball deep in our own end, and Owen decided to go for the gold. Since the field was so small, we could pretty much punt it in from anywhere, and he tried a long kick. The kick was a little short and off to the side, and because we were playing on sand, it didn't roll at all. I had been running out for a pass, and found myself in a footrace with Clark to get to the ball. Just before he got to the ball, I slid in and booted it just inside the near post for the winning goal. The crowd went wild, and I took a victory lap in the ocean to wash off the sand.
We went back into town for dinner (pretty good Italian pizza/pasta place) and then headed back to the beach to spend the night. When we got there, the moon was low in the sky and behind clouds. The beach was almost in total darkness. Luckily, I had my flashlight. (Good ol' Boy Scouts) We sat on the beach for a few hours drinking wine and talking. It was really fun. Once the moon came out over the dune, it was actually pretty bright out. After the wine was gone, we went to sleep in the car. We had three people in each car, so two slept in the reclined front seats and the third slept across the back seat. It wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but we got pretty decent sleep anyway. We took the shorter, less-scenic highway home the next morning and made it home for lunch.
So that's the report from Melbourne. I'll try to go back and update the past weeks and events, but as I started off, I'm bad at posting. And if any of you are cold back home, just remember, I have three summers in a row. I miss you all, probably more than I show it, and I'm lookin forward to seeing everyone. Later dudes.
posted by Mike at 6:00 PM
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