October 18, 2010

Heading to Byron Bay now. Spent 3 nights in Coolangatta on the Gold Coast. There wasn’t a tour or anything planned, just a few days chilling on an awesome surf beach. Some huge Billabong surf comp is held on this beach every year. The surf wasn’t that great from what I could tell, but it may have just been a down time. The comp is held in Feb, so still a few months away for better swells. Anyway, Adam and Deb that I worked with up north for a bit work out here now, so I stayed at Adams hostel, Sands Hostel. Great place. Definitely a step up from Mission Beach. MB is a small town, small hostel. This is big city, fancy hostel. Really cool for them. First off, the bus stop was in a different time zone from the hostel. So weird! Like 5 min down the road, but a different time zone. I wouldn’t think that people would plan cities so close to each other on a time zone line, but what do I know. Adam says its cool around new years because you can celebrate in one zone, drunkenly stumble a few min down the road and do it again in another hour… kinda cool. I’m a huge fan of time zones, so I’d kill to do that. Maybe I have a goal for my new years. Anyway, I’m standing at the check in desk chatting with Adam and a girl that was on my bus comes in a few minutes later. Adam put us in the same room because we were both from the US. Well, first he put me in a room with some of his staff and figured I’d get on pretty good with them. I did, but after my shower he said he was moving me in with Leah. Cool, whatever. She and I got along really well. She’s from Colorado and is some bad ass boarder. Redbull sponsors her and she was in the US Open or something. She knows heaps of huge names from the boarding world. Means nothing to me, but pretty cool for her. She’s traveled the world in a big way and just got over a huge break up so is taking some time off. She’s thinking about starting a new chapter in life in the warm and on the ocean. She’s going to take up surfing and wanted to find a place to stay nearby. Pretty cool chick. The first night we hung in the room talking all night. I stopped in on Adam and Deb for a bit and caught up with them until they went out. Next day Leah and I went to McDonalds in the AM for internet, beach all day, then went to check out an apartment. The beach was nice and quiet. Pretty windy, so we had to find a spot along a rock wall to block the wind. Before the apartment we watched the sunset on the beach. The sun set over the town in the distance but the whole sky lit up. She loved the apartment and the roommate, Nick, was super cool. He was a surfer and had spent a few seasons at ski resorts in the US and Japan, so they had that in common. The guy that moved out was from the US and worked in Lake Tahoe. Leah saw that as a huge sign, so she was already persuaded. We talked to him for a bit, such a cool guy, and she said she’d stop by the next day to give him the deposit. On the way back we saw a really nice sushi place. All of the sushi places I’ve seen have mostly been sushi trains so pretty much all the same rolls, nothing fancy. This was a legit sit down sushi bar. We went back to the hostel to get appropriate attire and went back. SO amazing! We got three rolls and seaweed salad. I haven’t had proper sushi since I’ve been here. I had sushi train each time I was in Sydney and Cairns, but that doesn’t really count. This will hold me over until I get home I think. Now I have to find a place as good as Sushi-o near Howell. We each got a cocktail to celebrate her new apartment, and went back to the hostel. After the nice sunset we decided to get up early to see the sunrise because neither of us had done that since we’d been in Australia. Sunrise was 5:05am. We ACTUALLY got up to do it and walk out to the cold beach and find that the sun is going to rise off behind a building around some little peninsula in the distance. Awesome. Again, the sky over the water was beautiful, but not quite what we were looking for. We went back to bed and spent the next day at the beach again. This time we went down the coast a bit to the actual beach of the surf comp and watched some surfers there. I’m a little nervous to surf. Clearly I won’t be riding any waves like that, but it should be quite an experience. We didn’t do anything in the evening, just traded some music and movies and this morning chatted with Adam a bit before he took me to the bus stop and Leah to her new apartment. Could have missed my bus because I didn’t even think about the time difference at the bus stop so thankfully I made it. Lost an hour though. Weird! Headed to Byron now. I’ve heard great things about it so I’m fairly excited. No ones’ really given me much detail about why it’s so great so I don’t know what to expect, only greatness. A few days here and then start surf camp on Saturday.