"The traffic is stuck, and you're not moving anywhere"

Bono's words blared from the stereo right as I slowed to a stop behind three other cars and saw the traffic on the other side of the construction zone begin to move toward us down the road, which was narrowed to one lane.  I just started laughing along with Doc, who had chosen the song on my ipod before we turned the corner and saw the construction zone.  I love it when coincidences like that happen. In the two hours since leaving Melbourne, we had only had to stop at one light in Cranbourne. There was no traffic... I guess not many people were keen to leave their beds like we had at 6:45 am when it was literally freezing outside.

It was still dark when we left school and started driving southeast to Wilson's Prom.  The sunrise through the fog was amazing. Faker had never seen frost before - I guess they don't get it too often in Singapore, seeing as it's right by the equator - so I stopped the car when we found a good patch and Doc and I took her frost skiing.  We wound our way from Melbourne down the highway to Cranbourne, between fields and over hills to Leongatha as day broke, and finally arrived at Wilson's Promontory National Park.  My buddy K-Train at school had recommended the Sealer's Cove hike, so the three of us went for it, all 10 kilometres there and 10 more back.  

We had such a blast!  I still hadn't seen a wombat, so I was pretty stoked when about 3 k's into the hike, we found one of the fat little bear-looking things waddling around on one of the saddles between two mountains.  The trail went along the side of one mountain and then around another one, and in every fold of the mountain the air grew humid and the path was muddy.  The sun doesn't hit that side of the mountain in winter, I guess.  It was perfect hiking weather, with a perfectly blue sky and a high temperature around 15 (60 fahrenheit).  After a couple hours we got down to sea level, where a boardwalk ran for FOREVER (like between 2 and 3 ks) over swampy ground, over a couple little billabongs, and to the beach.  When we finally got there, the view was stunning.  The water was a clear green, the beach ran for hundreds of metres either way, and at either end a rocky headland rose up where the bay opened into the ocean.  The northern headland was more like a mountain.  At the south end of the bay the beach became a bunch of boulders sticking out in the water, so we decided to go have our lunch out on a rock in the water.  To get there, we crossed the tidal river where the Billabong we had crossed ran into the bay and then we had to rock-hop our way from the beach out to the boulder with a flat top.  We were aware that the tide was coming in, but went for it anyways.  We called Faker a little mountain goat because whereas Doc and I could easily step from rock to rock in most cases, Faker-Goat had to jump to reach them.

What a view!  From the rock, we could see the mountains all around the bay and the whole beach.  I had brought bread, peanut butter and jam in my backpack, so Doc had his first pbj for lunch (they don't usually eat pbjs in Oz.  It's an American thing).  We just sat on the rock and ate (we were famished and tired after the 10 k hike with only one stop) and talked.  When we decided that we had better head back if we wanted to see the sunset from the other side of the Prom, we discovered that the tide had come in faster than we thought.  The water was a good foot higher than when we had started.  I took my shoes off and rolled my jeans up, but Doc and Faker both made the mistake of getting their shoes wet.  I just tore the soles of my feet up on the sharp rocks.  Faker-Goat and I soaked our jeans up to the knees (Faker up to mid-thigh), even though we rolled them up. So with wet jeans, we hiked 10 ks as fast as we could to beat the sunset.  It still took about 2 1/2 hours.  Faker also made a pretty solid effort of rolling her ankle but hung in there and we got back to the car and drove down to the beach on the west side of the Prom, barely in time to see a gorgeous sunset over the coast and strait.

I don't know what the kangaroo was thinking standing right in the middle of the bridge on the way back, but seeing one of those massive things in your headlights does a good job of waking you up.  I clocked him hopping down the road at pushing 50 km/h, and he looked like he was going easy.  We stopped for KFC when we finally reached a town, then continued the drive back up to school.  When we needed a break, we braved the freezing cold to step out of the car and look at the stars and the milky way for a little bit.  Faker said she doesn't really get to see the milky way or sunsets in singapore, which made me really thankful for being able to see them back home.  Getting up a little after 6, hiking over 20 kilometres, and not having gotten enough sleep sure does wear you out, so I think we all slept really well last night.

Other than that, I was mainly studying and writing papers this week.  One of my Canadian friends had her boyfriend here for a few weeks, and last weekend she had to go on a camping trip so I took James surfing with me.  He said he surfed some back home and could handle cold water, so we headed down to Phillip Island.  James said he hadn't even seen waves that big before.  Express was probably about 6 ft.  He rented a board at Smith's Beach and we went to surf the smallest beachbreak I could find at YCWs, which was still about 3 ft.  I caught some good 3-4 ft. waves on the beachbreak left and then paddled out to a little right point breaking off the rocks at the south end of the bay.  It was a little sketchy sitting about 10 ft. from the dry rocks and waiting for the 4 ft. set waves.  The drop-in was fun - 3 ft. overhead waves ledging onto some shallow rocks - but there wasn't much ride because the wave broke into deep water.  Being out there by myself surfing a shallow break surrounded by deep water still kinda throws me off, so I went back in to where James was waiting on the beach and we went down to Summerlands, the little right point on the beach with the penguins.  I wish I had my quad here because even though that wave was overhead, it is pretty soft except for a couple barrel sections.  James struggled a little bit getting out in the crashing waves and the currents, but I was really glad he had a go and he was stoked just to be there.

I'm down to the final week of class with two final assignments due next Tuesday.  It's hard to believe that I'm going to be leaving so soon.  I've gotta work really hard during the week so I can take advantage of my last bits of free time in Melbourne.  And I'm dying to surf Bells again.

Out here in the fields... I fight for my meals.

Doc and I drove for a long time through the countryside on Friday evening before we got to his hometown of Boort.  His 17-year-old brother Jason was in a debutante ball, so we parked at Doc's grandma's house, dressed up nice and walked across the street to where the ball was being held.  We were pretty late, but we still got there in time for some snacks, which was good enough for me.

After leaving the ball, we walked across the street to the local pub to shoot a little pool.  We played one guy who had apparently been drinking since 7 a.m., so I don't know how he was still insanely good.  The pub was pretty much a family place - little kids were running around under the bar stools and there were some 10- or 12-year-old kids shooting pool, and they were pretty impressive so they must practice a lot.  One of them told me that he has a table at home and he plays every day.  I guess it's the same with most tiny country towns, but everybody in the pub knew everybody else, so I was definitely the odd man out.  Doc introduced me to some people, but some of the old guys just stared at me like "who the heck are you?"  Actually, a couple of them asked me almost that exact question and when they found I was an American, they were like "and what are you doing in Boort?"  I had to explain several times that I was Andre Henry's friend from uni and we were up from Melbourne for the weekend.

We got challenged to pool by a couple of rough-looking farm workers who were brothers.  One had a shiny bald head, a black mustache, and ring earrings in each ear.  The other one had gray hair, was a little burly, and had some sweet tats all over his arms.  I was a little sus about the whole thing because they seemed a little aggro, but the bald dude said "we may look scary, but we're not that bad," so we played.  And they won.  Twice.  I was hoping Doc and I would have the sober advantage, but they weren't drunk enough apparently.

After we finished playing, I had a very interesting discussion with the gray-haired one about American foreign policy and the history of conflict in the middle east.  I told him I thought the whole thing was just messed up from the beginning anyways, because colonial rule had created countries that incorporated incompatible religious and ethnic groups so in general a strong centralized government, often in the form of totalitarianism, was required to hold the countries together along their current borders.  Then we talked about how cold war dynamics and the creation of the state of Israel had pulled the US into too much involvement in the region, and how the US has spent far too much money on aiding nations like Iraq and Iran in pursuit of its oil interests rather than seeking alternative energy sources.  Finally, we ended on Bush's movement from a war on terrorism to bringing down the Ba'athist regime in Iraq and we considered how the diverse religious and ethnic groups within Iraq have reacted to the absence of an oppressive government, and whether the Kurds, Shi'as and Sunnis would be able to coexist under a centralized government or whether peace would require the division of Iraq. Both of us concluded that it was too much of a mess over there and Bush had gotten in too deep by not understanding the dynamics of the region when making speeches about bringing democracy to Iraq.

Overall, a fascinating conversation with a drunk guy in a country pub.  The dude said "Hey, you're all right for a bloody seppo," and I said thanks.  I appreciate being referred to as a septic tank just because I'm American.  He said he didn't like most Americans he met and I told him he should meet a few more southern kids.  It's mainly big-city blokes that aren't as nice, I reckon.  I'm glad I made a good impression.

We spent the night at Doc's grandma's house and in the morning she showed me all kinds of old photos and told me stories about life in the country back toward the middle of the century.  Northern Victoria has been in horrible drought for years, but she showed me pictures of times when the roads were flooded and they had to travel by a 4x4 with a snorkel in order to get to the farms.

After breakfast, we drove to where Doc's dad, Tony (Nugget) works, in the largest olive grove in the southern hemisphere.  The three of us drove around in the ute (pickup) and Nugget gave me a tour of the place.  We saw the massive colossus harvesters working their way down the rows of olive trees.  The machine is hollow through the middle, maybe pushing 20 feet high.  Trees go through the middle of the harvester as someone sitting in the cab drives it down the row.  Inside the harvester, mechanical arms work in and out, controlled by a second crewman, and beat the olives off the tree.  The olives fall onto conveyor belts in the bottom of the colossus and are taken up a chute and spit out the front of the harvester into a trailer hauled by a tractor.  There are some powerlines that cross the fields, and Nugget said that recently a whole team almost died of electrocution when the colossus knocked over a pole.  The lines fell and electrocuted the machine as the crew jumped out, and when the lines finished bouncing on the machine and sparking, they stopped a mere 3 inches above the metal roof of the machine.  3 inches further down, Nugget said, would have meant that the machine's tires blew and the ground around the colossus would have been electrocuted, killing the surrounding trees and people.

After the olive groves, we drove back through Boort and across some more fields, to where Doc's farm is about 30 minutes outside of town.  Doc's brother Jas greeted us, eager to start the eating competition he had been anticipating ever since he heard my reputation.  He was smiling mischievously, and I laughed when I saw what he was smiling about.  In an attempt to throw me off of my appetite, he had dyed the pancake batter a bright slime green.  I said I didn't mind what colour they were as long as they tasted all right.

Doc told me that Jas might give me a run for my money, and he was right as far as the short-term goes.  After eating several massive pancakes that resembled slightly toasted lilly pads, we ran out of batter and moved on to toast while Doc watched.  Jas asked if I was up for vegemite, and Doc started groaning, which I took for not such a good sign.  When I said all right, Doc was like "You should see how much vegemite he puts on his toast, mate.  It's like having a little toast with your vegemite."  Most people spread it on really thin, and as I have pointed out before, only Aussies seem to like it at all, but Jas spread it on nice and thick like peanut butter.  I forced a smile to intimidate him as I took a massive bite and felt the saltiness seep into my gums.  He got scared for a minute but when I hit a big chunk of vegemite and couldn't help but grimace, he got his confidence back.

So after vegemite we piled more peanut butter than I have ever eaten at once on a piece of toast and downed that, then some orange juice, then ate an apple each, then another big piece of vegemite toast, then another apple.  Eventually we got bored, even though I could have eaten more.  I didn't want to ruin my day by making myself lazy, so we agreed to scull a massive glass of milk and see who finished first.  He beat me by less than a second and started celebrating.  But he wasn't celebrating later that day when I was eating seconds at dinner and he was full after one plate, or the next day when I had to help him finish his lunch.  Take that!  I'm a marathon eater!

Doc showed me the Barramundi and Murray Cod they were raising in tanks in their fish farm, and then we had a kick of the footy with Jas.  We also got the orange cannon working (kind of) and were firing tennis balls out of the contraption to Jas, who stood with a tennis racquet about 70 metres away.  It was firing pretty inconsistently so we let Jas have a go.  Doc and I were kicking the footy when Jas finally got a shot off.  I turned in time to see a massive flame shoot out of the barrel of the cannon, and another flame shoot out the sides where Jas's hands were.  He jumped back as fast as he could and started laughing really hard as a flaming tennis ball landed halfway across the field in front of the house.  I guess that proved our suspicions that the cannon had a leak and that's why it wasn't working properly.

When Nugget got home that night, he drove us around while Doc and I stood in the back of the ute with a spotlight and shot rabbits.  Doc was telling me that the population of rabbits introduced by the English nearly wiped out many of the native species of rodents.  He said that if the number of rabbits got too high, they sometimes had rabbit plagues, swarms of the long-eared creatures devouring fields of crops.  They were everywhere, but it was hard to get one to stand still long enough to get a good shot off.  It didn't help that the scope on the .22 I was shooting was broken, so I had to figure out that it was shooting about a foot off the crosshairs, high and to the right, before I finally got a couple.  Then I tried out a .22 with a laser sight, which was pretty fun.  Doc and I took turns spotlighting and shooting.

Mothers day meant lunch with Doc's mum and grandma, which was really good.  Like I said, I had to finish Jas's meat and potatoes off because he was still pretty full from the previous day.  Doc's grandma told me more stories about life in the country.  I learned quite a bit about the history of Australian rural medicine.  After lunch, Doc, Jas, and I went out to the field behind the house and attempted to shoot clays with the .410.  Wow.  I'll tell you something, sure I can break clays with a 12- or 20-guage, but a 410 is a different story.  I think we each broke two or three, but we were definitely struggling.  Jas said he's going to try to get a 12-guage for next time.

We headed back to Clayton that night, a rather uneventful drive.  Everybody was glad to see us back in time for tea, which seems to be getting later and later these days.  We decided to shoot some pool so next time we play drunk guys we can beat them.  We've been playing the past few nights and we're definitely getting better.

What am I up to this week, you ask?  Well as the semester winds down I have put off doing a paper for my politics in the Middle East class to the last date of the rolling deadline.  So I have a paper worth 50% of my grade due Tuesday.  Hoo-ray.  I might manage to have at least one adventure this weekend though... If I hurry up and get my paper done before then.

They Say I'm Crazy but I have a good time... (Life's been good to me so far)

At home I have enough of a hard time balancing school and play, but here it has been a true challenge for me because I want to see and experience as much as I can before I leave.  It's a continual realization for me that I should take advantage of everything back home just as much as I do here.  I mean, there's no reason why I couldn't just go sleep in the back of my car and travel for a few days back home too.  My system of trying to take one weekend to hang out in Melbourne and get all of my work done and then traveling the next weekend has worked pretty well so far.  Life's not about just getting things done, but about doing things.  Actually living.  But now and then we are forced to just get things done, and the faster you do them and the less you procrastinate, the more time you have to do fun things.

I had a paper due for Bioethics today and I had chosen the topic of discussing whether or not the reproductive technologies developed since the 1960s empower women.  It was pretty interesting actually.  I read a bunch of chapters from feminist books that talked about how reproductive technology was developed by male scientists and is just another way for men to express control over women and I  realized that a lot of the stuff they said was true, at least in part, about men trying to control the future of the human species.  Or at least the future of those humans who can afford the technology.  I think it's kind of sad to discuss pre-implantation genetic diagnosis anyways.  People want what's best for their child, but who wants the expectation of being the "best child possible"?  Really.  My lecturer handed out these handouts a couple weeks ago asking us what traits we would choose for our ideal child if we were going to take advantage of in-vitro fertilization and PGD.  All these kids were like "well, I'd have a girl, brown hair, blue eyes..." I'm like dang man, I'd be pretty stoked to have a kid with a couple eyes and a mouth and nose and  legs and arms and maybe a little hair and stuff like that.  Whatever God wants to create.  You don't have to be the perfect child to have a good life, and you don't have to have the perfect child to have a good life as a parent.  Get over it.  No matter what you do, your kid is always going to be messed up.  Otherwise they wouldn't be a person.  Sorry, I just get a little mad about people wanting to control everything, these parents who picture themselves having a little angel child who never does anything wrong because they have been genetically selected to be nice and easygoing.

So I got all my research for my paper done this weekend but I couldn't seem to get what I wanted to say down on paper, so I resorted to the best known cure for paper writing (or basically any malady, in my book): Surfing, of course.  I reckon sleep doesn't really matter that much these days, so I finished organizing all of my research on Monday night until like 1 a.m., then got up at 6 and drove to Phillip Island.  Google Earth told me it would take me 1 hour 48 minutes to get there. As usual, I was really excited and made the trip in a little over an hour.  It makes me feel so efficient when I'm driving away from the city in the morning and the traffic going into the city is backed up forever on the freeway, and then vice versa on the way back in the afternoon.

Well, I got down to Phillip Island and parked on top of this cliff at Surf Beach.  That's a cool name for a town.  The Town is called Surf Beach and the beach is called Woolamai.  I got out of the car to look at the surf down at Surfies Point, a nice right breaking in front of a rock shelf, pretty typical of the area around Melbourne.  There was one guy out, it was about 3-4 ft (7-10 for all you floridians), and the wind was howling northwest and freezing cold.  Outside of the car, I started shivering uncontrollably and I figured it would probably be a good time to don the wetsuit and go take a swim in equally cold water.  I caught a few good waves that lined up all the way across the point, and the wave was a little bit fat but fairly rippable.  When the other guy left I was just sitting out the back by myself in the dark water and the helicopter that looks for sharks flew over.  I pictured myself in a picture in the newspaper: an aerial shot of me on my surfboard as a great white swam right behind me without me even noticing it.  I think my shark-wary mentality from living so close to the shark attack capital of the world has influenced me a little too much.  I just tried not to let myself think about it and kept surfing.  I guess on the bright side, if I got attacked at home I'd have to pay a hospital bill.  If I get attacked here, I probably won't ever have to pay for anything again.  The biggest white shark caught in Australia was apparently brought in just off the tip of Phillip Island, about 4 miles from Surfies point.

Even when I got out of the water toward midday, the wind was freezing cold.  With the tide coming up, I decided to head over to Express Point, the best wave on the island.  It was the most fun surf I've had in a long time but come to find out, access isn't as easy as most spots.  I think there is another way in along the cliff tops, but I parked forever away at Smith's Beach and made a little hike.  Here are the directions, in case you ever want to go there: walk a couple hundred metres down Smith beach, wait for the waves to stop crashing against the rocks at the end of the beach for a few seconds and climb over them, climb down to the next beach, kill your feet on the cobblestones for another 100 metres, climb up some really slippery rocks and down to the next beach, walk another couple hundred metres through really soft sand with rocks hidden in it, climb up onto the top of a little headland at the end, slide on your butt down the slippery mud to the rocks at the edge of the headland (don't slip cause it's a long way down), rock-hop down to about 12 feet above where the powerful waves are crashing against the little rock cliff and spraying you in the face with salt water, and wait for a set to come into the reef.  As soon as the set breaks on the reef, get ready to go.  Just before the whitewater from the last wave of the set crashes into the rocks beneath you, climb down to one of the rocks about 6 feet above the water and as the wave comes, dive in on top of it and paddle really hard to avoid getting swept back against the rocks.  When waves come there will be two rocks sticking out of the water right in front of you.  Paddle between them and try not to get sucked onto them by the current, paddle as fast as you can to make it out before the next set comes, and after another 70 metres of paddling you're there.  On the way back, get washed up on the rocks beside the little cliff and reverse directions to the car park.  By the time you get to the car, you should probably be bleeding from at least 8 places on your feet, have several bruises from getting washed up on the rocks, have numb fingers so you can barely turn the key to open the car, and not be able to feel your arms from all the paddling you've done.

Or at least that's how I got there.  Express is the heaviest wave I've ever surfed and I definitely have a lot to learn about barrel riding in waves like that.  Right in front of where the wave breaks there are a bunch of sharp rocks sticking up out of the water so you don't want to wipe out on the drop in or you'll probably be hurting pretty bad.  Almost as soon as I paddled out, I caught my first wave.  It was basically a free-fall down the face, and as I made my bottom turn I could see the individual rocks beneath my board as they made boils in the water around me.  I caught a couple waves just to practice the steep drop, then I paddled deeper on the reef to try for the barrel.

There were two older locals sitting outside with me, and when they both caught waves I knew my time had come.  A set approached and the perfect wave started bowling up on the reef.  I paddled out to meet the wave as it walled up, and spun to take off.  The 6 or 7 locals sitting on the inside section hooted, and when people hoot at you, you just have to go for it.  I paddled hard, trying not to look at the boils from the rocks only a couple feet underwater in front of me as I felt the wave begin to push me.  I stood up and set my line down the face of the wave, basically free-falling over the ledge, and did a quick bottom turn into the barrel section over one particularly shallow rock.  I pulled into the best barrel of my life for about two seconds before the heaviest wipeout I've had so far in Australia (except for maybe that time I lost my board at Snapper Rocks and had to swim 150 metres for it while being crushed by massive waves).  As I pulled up under the second section of the ledging barrel, the tube pinched at the end and the lip of the wave, probably a foot and a half thick, clipped me in the head.

When I say clipped me in the head, I mean like Jeremy Morrison or somebody putting on one of those big goofy boxing gloves that we used to have at youth group and punching me in the head as hard as he could.  Basically, as it hit my head, my feet flew up in the air inside the barrel and my whole body just did a flip with the wave as it rolled over and tossed me across the reef like a little rag doll.  I got lucky and didn't hit any rocks (I could feel them just beneath me), and when I came up, all of the locals started cheering.  It was a little embarrassing to take a wipeout that bad, but nobody else had gotten in the barrel like that, at least that I had seen, so everybody told me how sick the wipeout was, but they were all stoked that I had gone for the tube.  I guess they were glad for a little entertainment.

After a few more waves, the tide started dropping out and Express got too dangerous to surf, so I washed up on the rocks and took the hike back to the car and drove down to one last surf spot, a little right point at Summerlands, where there is a penguin parade every evening.  The wave was a little wedge like Ponce Inlet, but over really shallow rocks.  As the tide dropped, I had to stop surfing it because it was getting too shallow.  Then I drove back to Melbourne, which took me quite a while due to the fact that it started raining so hard that I couldn't see the road 50 feet in front of me.  When I got back in the evening I had a nice 7-page paper to write, but after surfing it was pretty much a breeze.  I didn't even need red bull to keep me up until 4 am.  That being said, I hope I get a decent grade from my super liberal teacher.

We've been playing inter-halls sports competitions for the past few weeks.  My team from Roberts did decently in Volleyball, but we didn't play so well in the round last week so we're playing for third place on Sunday.  On Monday I went out and played some 6 v 6 soccer for Roberts.  Tons of people came out to play, So I didn't get to play the whole game, but I was happy that I was able to do a pretty solid job playing defense and only one goal was scored while I was in (and that was because somebody obstructed our goal keeper so it shouldn't have counted anyway).

School's been pretty tough, but I did really really well on my English assignment (maybe the best grade in my tutorial?) and I think my bioethics paper is pretty good.  It better be, because it's 35% of my grade.  I have a paper to write for my political science class next week, but this weekend I'm headed up to Doc's house to experience rural Australian life on his farm.  Sounds like a good time.  I have a reputation for eating the most out of everybody here, and apparently Doc's 17-year-old brother has challenged me to an eating competition.  I think he's in a growth spurt or something, to be willing to challenge me like that.  Apparently Doc and I are going to his brother's deb ball on Friday night as well.  I thought that was just a southern thing that we did for the girls back in South Carolina, but apparently it's a big thing here, though not as formal.

I was really sad I missed Rachel's wedding.  Thanks you guys who have told me about it.  I really wish I could have been there and it's great to hear about everything going on back home.

Oh yeah, I should mention that the highlight of the week of school was definitely our cultural night.  Every two weeks or so, one of the stairways provides dessert from a specific country and does a skit about that culture.  My stairway chose to do Scotland, so I led the skit by dressing up as William Wallace, full on with a massive wig and the braveheart blue facepaint, plus an improvised kilt.  I did the freedom speech in the skit and everybody got a kick out of it (probably also out of the improvised kilt almost falling off when we danced around at the end of the skit).