I felt a little depressed yesterday after realizing how little time I left to experience this immense country and that I've been kind of that I've been kind of slacking off on the touristy travels and just been hanging around Bondi Junction and Manly...not that there's anything wrong with that.
While sitting on the hour long ferry from Manly Beach back to Circular Quay, soaking wet from the thunderstorm and down pour that hit us 2 minutes before I was about to leave, I began to reminisce about my quintessential Aussie weekend and how much I'm going to miss this place.
Friday night started with a Manly summer league, end of the year party in which our team, Beer O'clock received our championship trophies. At the bar they had a game called "beat the bar" (there really aren't any more creative names to call it), where after each order placed you are entitled to flip a coin. If you win all the drinks you ordered are free and Manly summer league takes the bill, if you lose you simply pay the amount owed. I was a perfect 5 for 5 on pints for the evening which soon lead to debauchery and me passing out cold on the ferry and getting woke up by the ferry officer an hour later telling me to get the hell off the boat before I end up back in Manly.
On Saturday we fired up the barbie Australia style with 20 lbs of assorted meats to celebrate my roommates birthday. We drank quite heavily until 11 o'clock and I was persuaded to head out downtown with a bunch of my friends. The 5 jager bombs (jagermister and red bull) allowed us to keep roaring until the clubs closed down at 4am where I hitch a ride home and consumed nearly all our left overs.
Sunday was a bit of a struggle for most of the morning. The Jagerbombs from the previous night didn't sit too well in the stomach, or the kidneys for that matter. After about an hour and a half of drinking coffee and channel surfing through our 4 channels I sucked it up and headed to the Ferry en route to Manly Beach for some beach ultimate. After all it was 85 degrees. God I love this country.
I feel slightly embarrassed in the fact that I've been playing this sport for seven years and have never once played an organized game on the beach. I would argue it was one of the best beach memories in my life. There where about 30 people there playing 6 on 6 games in soft hot sand laying out for everything. At 5:30 after two hours of playing everyone ran in for a swim in the luke warm ocean water and enjoyed 4 foot waves and an unbelievable sunset.
Next week I head of to Melbourne for the ANZAC (Australia new Zealand army corps) weekend for Nationals with the Manly Ultimate team. After that I have only two weeks of work and I'm getting my arse out of Sydney ready to take on Gold and Sunshine coast. Stay tuned more entries to come in a few days. I know I've been slacking.
