Chapter 15 – Flat Tire, Outlet Mall, Amazing Race Brisbane, Kirra Beach Kite Festival

In which our hero is consistently too tired for several days to write any blog posts, and also makes another perilous journey through time and space ...

So here's what you've missed. I haven't written anything since last Thursday, by my calendar. That's because the exciting thing that was supposed to happen on Friday didn't happen, and after that I was to tired. You'll have to be patient, though, gentle reader. Now that classes have started, the posts probably won't be as frequent. I can almost guarantee that they won't be every day. Partially because I won't have time, and partially because nothing very exciting will happen, because it'll just be all school all the time.

As I said, Friday didn't exactly turn out as planned. I had to get up early for the Engineering Department orientation, which was 9-12. They kindly gave us a free lunch afterword. The thing itself wasn't very exciting, but it was informative. At 1:00 was supposed to be a session of Barefoot Bowls, which I think is similar to lawn bowling, perhaps, or possibly more like bocci or p'tonk, except with rolling instead of throwing. (I know it's not p'tonk. I think it's probably petanque.) Long story short, it got cancelled due to the potential for uncooperative weather. So I decided to got and poke around Harbour Town, which is an outlet mall that the bus stops at on the way home.  Here are some pics I took while having a wander ...

The crows here are massive.  Probably the same ones they have in Japan, or similar.  I'll try to get one with something for scale some time.

Ominousness.

Looking the other direction, not so ominousness.

Bananas in Pajamas!

Tee hee hee ...

OK, wait. I need to back up to the morning. I've been having some success riding my bike down to the station, and even all the way back up the hill. On Thursday I thought the tires felt a little soft, but Shane at the bike shop said if there was any more pressure in them the tires would blow right off the rims. So I left it. Then on Friday morning, the ride felt a bit lumpy and bumpy. I looked down and back, to see the back tire, and it was flat. But I only had about 10 mins till the bus departed, so I didn't have time to get off and walk the rest of the way. I had to ride down on a flat tire. It was awful, and bumpy, and I could only wonder how much damage was being done to the tire and rim. I finally made it down to the station, and locked up, and decided I'd deal with it later.

So, now I'm back at Harbour Town. There was a Converse store. If only I had a disposable income ... Anyway. There was also a Salvos nearby, which is Aussie for the Salvation Army Store. I popped in there for a bit, and got a couple mugs, one of which has Mr. Happy on it, and the other has a sheep going 'baaa'. There was a big camping and fishing store beside it, so I went in there as well. They had roof tents, and bunk cots. Pretty snazzy.

Then back to Helensvale, to deal with the bike. I took it over to the bike shop, but couldn't decide on the regular or heavy duty inner tube, because I was too tired. So I left it with them and said I'd call them later. Fix it man said to call on Saturday, but I naturally forgot, cuz I was otherwise occupied.

A different kind of Easter egg treat -- chocolate with dried bananas and toffee bits, perhaps?  This was later on, at K-Mart near home.  Thought it was interesting.

So on to Saturday. Race Day. Another early morning, but even more early. Had to be on the train at 8:04 to get to Brissie for 9. So up at 6:30. Sunscreen up. Bathing suit up. (The reminder email said we might get wet.) Put my running sandals on. First sunny day for like a week, luckily. Made it down to the station. My friend from Denmark was already there, as were a girl from Germany, and from South Korea. Then a girl from England came, except she'd been living here for five years, so that makes her kind of from here. So we all hung out, and waited for the train, and then rode the train to South Bank station, and made our way to the Amazing Race registration. Just to clarify, this isn't, like, “real” Amazing Race, just a Griffith students version. Myself, Denmark, Germany, and another girl from Germany ended up as a team. Our team captain was a local who'd just finished a semester in England, so we had a wonderfully diverse group.

The first challenge was to find the Amazing Race person near the beach/pool thing in the park, and then do what they said. It involved getting into the pool, and I was the only one who'd worn their swim suit under their clothes, so I went in. It was a game called “Flags”, where I had to lie on my stomach facing away from the pool, and a ring got tossed in, then I had to go and get it really quickly. It was fun. And nice to jump in a pool on the first hot day in a while. After that there were several other challenges to complete, like finding the poem in ANZAC Square, and filling in the blanks on our sheet to complete it, or finding the guy in the purple morph suit anywhere in the Queen Street Mall, and getting a picture with him. We spent a lot of time looking for him because he was worth 15 points. We also went to China Town in search of a specific menu item that was #202, somewhere on a specific street. We were getting late by then, so we caught a bus back to near the school, and ran/walked quickly back. We only had two hours to complete as many challenges as possible, and we lost two points for every five minutes we were late. We ended up being 15 minutes late, so we lost 6 points. I was the one with the shortest legs, and the most out of shape, so I feel like that was partially my fault. But oh well. It was fun. The running I did do nearly killed me, and my knee is still hurting. 

At first we couldn't find the right morph suit guy, so we figured this random cat man was in a morph suit with accessories, so we took a pic with him as a back up.

 

Shortly after we found the real morph suit guy ...

... but first we had to catch him!

One photo challenge was to take a pic of a team member on a City Bike, so naturally we took one with four of us.

Another was one of the team hugging a tree in the Botanical Gardens.  We didn't make it that far, so we just hugged a random tree.

The knee thing didn't get helped at all by the munchkins wanting to play tag as soon as I got home, and then more tag the next day on the beach, and some trampoline. Good grief.

That night I was far too tired to write anything. The next night I pretty much spent watching TV.

Sunday morning I slept till 10. When I got up, the fam said they were just heading out to the Kite festival at Kirra Beach, and I could come if I liked, so I quickly knocked together some brekkie to go, loaded on the sunscreen, and hopped in the car. To get there the highway kind of swooped through NSW for a few minutes, so we briefly travelled into the future. The thing is, see, is that although we're in the same time zone, QLD doesn't play along with the whole daylight savings thing, so right now NSW is an hour ahead. That was fun. I don't think I realized how close we were to the state line. I don't even know if they call them state lines here.  Border, maybe?  Unfortunately I had no cookies to celebrate.  It would have been two in like ten minutes, then two more on the way back...

As soon as we arrived, and miraculously found a good parking spot, it started to rain. It only lasted about five or ten minutes, though, and then it was a great day. Playing tag on the beach, watching the kites, wandering around the market stalls, eating some ice cream, collecting some sea shells and beach stones. We were only there for less than three hours, I think, but we were all exhausted, and enjoyed a quiet afternoon at home.

The tiger, penguin, and dog are all on the same line.  When we first arrived it was windy and it looked like the tiger was walking.  The people operating them just got them going, then tied the ends down with sand bags and left them to fly.  It was pretty cool.  There was a dragon too, and a frog, and some sting rays, and a sort of jelly fish thing.  I forgot my phone at home, so I nicked this one from Sarah's FB :D (I actually took the pic, just with her phone ...)

I am now to the point where I enjoy these kids so much that I'd rather not go to school, but stay home and build towers with Mega Bloks, which we did today. (That would be silly, of course, as the kids are in school all day.)  It started as building deliberately flimsy towers with wooden blocks, so they'd fall down when we launched hot wheels into them. Then we decided to build a tower and use all the wooden blocks, which we then filled with little army men. Then, since we were out of wooden blocks, we pulled out the big Mega Bloks and built a tower with them. Sarah let us leave it up at least until tomorrow :D