bailed out

I have to admit I have been incredibly poor at keeping up with my blog. Luckily for the select few who choose to read this monstrosity, my friend Phil is keeping one. He and I took an excellent road trip and luckily for you he is full of enthusiasm and was also an English major. Here is the link, there are some great pictures. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE

Horrendous delay on any post that is largely inexcusable except to say that I have been enjoying my time too much to get to a computer.

Long story short:

Work at the winery finished and I had enough of 84 hour weeks and immediately headed to the tropics and spent some time in the Daintree rainforest, Cape Tribulation, Port Douglas and Cairns. It was much needed, and I even got to knock diving the Great Barrier Reef off of my bucket list. It was spectacular. I then headed back to Adelaide and hopped in my $350 car in an attempt to drive the entire coast to Sydney camping all but 3 nights in 3 weeks. The drive is aptly named the Great Ocean Rd. and it was beyond words. I met amazing people, had some nice fires, interacted with heaps of roos and koalas, saw incredible giant waves and beautiful rock cliffs. I also met some amazing people and it truly was the trip of a lifetime within what seems to be the trip of a lifetime. Sometimes I wake up and can not believe how much I LOVE my life.

Finally I departed Sydney and said a sad goodbye to some wonderful friends and drove towards the mountains. My brakes failed and I had to get them repaired the next morning after sleeping in my car and that created an interesting financial situation for a few days which included me making the 18k drive up the many switchbacks to my future home of Mt. Buller with the gas light on for the entirety of the ascent. Training was great, and it was so cool to wake up to snow in June. The job will start when we get more snow so for now I am living in Melbourne and enjoying a temporary urban environment. I miss good American coffee, beer, and most of all friends. I wish everyone could share this great time with me.

Time to go see if I can go find some cheap skis as I am required to ski to work every morning this winter. It sounds terrible.

Loving Life

I haven't been writing due to sheer enjoyment of life. We have grapes at work and this is the start of 6 12 hour days a week. I enjoy the work and am looking forward to enjoying the money to keep traveling. My life here in South Australia is so great and I need to leave before I decide to never leave. That being said the current departure date is set for June 21 to New Zealand. Who knows though my mind is like a tumble dryer of ideas with different ones on top with each new cycle and each new day. I have been seeing heaps of Kangaroos, drinking great wine, mediocre beer, and spending time with wonderful people. I've also been getting the hang of surfing and bought a wetsuit today after surfing early in the morning. Today I made my first conscious turns on the board and was immediately transported to the state of "pumped beyond comprehension!" It really is such a cool sensation and it is a very unique environment to enjoy. The perspectives of the beach, and the spray from a wave blowing back at you from offshore are very unique. I am very excited for the wetsuit as I originally bought some for cheap out of a classified to later find out that I could wear cold cardboard for the same effect. I ended up cold and very chaffed from the $45 special. It may strike you as odd that the water is cold, but keep in mind that if you went as the crow flies from the Fleurieu Peninsula that I live on the next land is Antarctica.

Enjoy the pictures, I miss everyone heaps!

I love my life.

I haven't written any words in a long time. This if you care to read may be a source of distress, but for me is a great sign. I am feeling very comfortable, content, and happy with my life here in South Australia. I am at the point where I am getting over the hump of being a traveler and feeling at home. I remember getting to this point when I was in college, but this time it was much more of an expedited process. I have made a few really close and wonderful friends, and have been surrounded by so many quality people that I can not even fathom that possibility that I ever doubted that this trip could be what it is. There were of course times when I wondered if getting a visa, and purchasing plane tickets across the world was a good idea. There were doubts of course, but without them the trip would not be quite what is is.

I can hardly believe how good this trip has been thus far. I am consistently overwhelmed with how special, and privileged I feel. If it is possible to convey how I feel it is to consistently insist that I do not write often enough because I feel as though I owe it to anyone who is not in my position, to make the absolute best of my time.

I love my job, I love the people I am living with, my stomach is often sore from overdoses of laughter. We drink good wine, mediocre beer, and eat great food. We work hard, get dirty, absolutely covered in vino. I have been trying lots of wine, learning to surf, going for long runs, man-handling 300 liter barrels, pondering different thoughts about the world, and wondering what it is that ever makes me hesitate to put myself out there and see what the world has to offer. I have talked to a few people since I left that say they are jealous, or that I am so lucky, or they wish they could do what I am doing. Rather than get a big head about being in my position I am humbled that anyone could ever be jealous of my dirtbag/vagabond style in the first place.

My inspiration and courage can be summed up simply in a Thoreau quote: "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." Though I have often plagiarized the confidence, and my imagination falls short repeatedly, I know that by following this small piece of advice, my life will be very rich. I also realize how many great people I have always been surrounded by, the best of friends and the finest of family. Bloody Oath, its the truth. You should all come visit!

Time Flies and so do Airplaines

I can not believe it has been over two months since I left the U.S. February 5th marked the two month mark. Life has been flying by here in South Australia. I am loving my life here in Port Willunga, and we now have a full house. I am living with two Aussies, three Americans, one Italian, and one Argentinian. All but one of us is working at the winery, and if the weather is right grapes should be arriving in a little over a week! The staff has quadrupled in the past two weeks, and I have been working my butt of and loving every minute of it. My hands are a permamant burgundy color that no soap seems to be able to remove.

If I'm not at work I've been keeping busy surfing, rock climbing, hanging out with new friends, and just enjoying being around a fantastic group of people. On Sunday I was able to combine my talents for a triple-entente of rock climbing, afternoon beers, and surfing in the evening. It was a perfect day off and needless to say I slept like a baby. I also saw two Koala's on the hike out from the rocks. We jumped and yelled to get their attention but they were just passed out like little lumps in between branches. Apparently they get really high from the eucalyptus and just sit around in the trees stoned. Only on such an isolated continent could a creature develop such habits! We climbed at a small area called Morialta which is just a short trip from where we live. It is so surreal to have climbing and the waves so close together.\

I was able to bargain my way out of work because some of the drains were getting worked on to catch the Super Bowl. I was sad to see the Steelers lose, but at least it is to a respectable franchise that upholds good traditions like the Steelers do, not some worthless orginazation like the Dallas or Baltimore, or teams that cheat like the New England Patriots. I hope this produces the opposite effect of the "Super Bowl Hangover"

Here is an interesting discovery I made in regards to my travels and Pittsburgh Sports:

May 2008

My Location: Manila, Philippines

Pittsburgh Penguins lost the Stanley Cup

The following season when I am in the States they Win the Stanley Cup

February 2011

My Location: Adelaide, South Australia

Pittsburgh Steelers lose the Super Bowl

This makes next year look really promising, if only someone can convince me to come home!

I hope everyone is well, and I need to congratulate my sister Natalie who will be starting with Teach for America in June in the state of Colorado!!! A great result from years of being a bad-ass sister!

I can't find my camera cord at the moment so I will post some pictures soon.

Time Flies

It is hard to believe that I have already been in Australia for over a month! Traveling for over 6 weeks, and two months since leaving Virginia. It is weird how things change, and how fast too. Time seems to fly for me when I am doing new things. Time at work also flies by, I have never worked such short 10 hour shifts, it almost seems like a joke. I am really appreciating what it means to be busy all day.

There's not too much to write about at the moment. The Steelers are playing this weekend for a chance to go to the Super Bowl. It is supposed to be really hot tomorrow, which is fine because I will make it a beach day since I am off work. Also on tomorrow's agenda is going to watch a stage of the Tour Down Under. The stage I watched in Adelaide on Sunday evening was really awesome. It was incredible to see some of the riders that I have been watching since 1999 when my dad and I would watch the Tour de France in the summers. I still remember watching some stages after getting home from work at Giant Eagle in Johnstown's west end, if anybody remembers those days!

Enjoy the pictures, I like this place a lot, its rather nice as you can see. In the first photo Lance is on the far right if anyone is interested!

It sounds cliche maybe but it was really cool seeing Lance Armstrong race. I think since I've watched him for years, read his books, and just the household-name style celebrity status was pretty wild. It seems hard not to see someone like that in person and wonder what is your life like? Its also inspiring to see how much money he has helped to raise for cancer victims, patients, and survivors. Not all people do such great things with their celebrity status. That being said I'm glad I am not a celebrity I don't feel I quite have the personality for it. Also being a cyclist it was amazing to see how fast the pros are, and the amount of power they are generating. Seeing bike racing always does strange things to my mind since I have stopped racing. Bikes are beautiful, and I am under the realization that I have no bike in Australia and that is something that needs to be remedied.

Routine

This is not my photo, I found it online, but it is a view from a road on my way home from work! Vines and ocean

I haven't posted in quite a while which is largely because I have gotten into a routine so to speak. On days when I wake up, go to work, have dinner, go to sleep and repeat the whole process the next day I am often not inspired to write much. That and the random topics I think to touch on throughout the day are lost just as dreams are often lost later in the day even if you remembered them in the morning. That being said here is what has been happening in my life.

I have been working a lot, we decided to work four ten hour days instead of five eight hour days which is really nice. There often is not anything I would do in the two hours after getting off after eight hours that would warrant not wanting a full free day off. i.e. today. Work is going great too, my first paycheck was earlier this week and it feels great to be making some Aussie dollars especially when the exchange with the states is nearly even. I have an Australian bank account and feel as though I don't have any loose ends at the moment.

On the job I have been learning quite a lot. When I arrive I am essentially given some assignments to complete. They could take hours or days, but there is always work to be done. Now that I am getting the hang of things I am largely able to complete my work while stopping to ask questions. I start work at 7 A.M. and since I am moving around and busy the time just flies. Even the ten hour days are a piece of cake. What I do at work is largely moving wine around. We will move wine from large tanks to smaller tanks, move wine to blend with other wines, transfer wine to oak barrels, or transfer wine to Vinpac, a bottling facility next door. We are always getting samples tested in the lab, and the winemakers often have things for us to do to make the wines better. The smells of working at the winery are really nice too, sans a few. The smell of the wines both whites and reds are excellent, and I am starting to be decent at picking up off smelling wines, and telling how far along in fementation a wine may be. The new oak barrels smell sooooo good, especially when you are filling them up with wine and combining both smells.

I part of the job that is really novel and fun is tasting wine. When we move wine from one vessel to another at some point the wine runs out from a vessel, or another vessel is full, but since they may be far apart there is hundreds of liters tied up in hoses and lines along the way. That translates to a lot of money so we do not want to just lose the wine. Using pumps we will push the wine back with water. There is a fun part of the job called a catch in which you watch the wine flowing through a site glass waiting for the color to change indicating water is on the way, or vice versa. When you are pushing water out of the line with incoming wine you have to taste the wine to ensure it is not watered down before you change the direction of flow to the intended vessel. Meanwhile water is pouring out right in front of you at a fast rate and splashing all over, then when it changes to wine you are reaching down and splashing the wine all over to get a taste. When the time is right you turn two valves at once to alternate the direction. This change usually is done within 2 seconds, though you sometimes wait for nearly a minute before the water or wine arrives. I hope this description makes some sense let me know if it doesn't.

Other things of note are trying out surfing a bit, climbing at a friends home made climbing wall, and hosting couchsurfers that have been traveling around the world on bikes for the past six years! The couple are a french guy adn his english wife in their mid thirties. They have been to over 50 countries on their trip, and that doesn't count the trip before this one where they rode from Alaska to the southern tip of South America. Check out http://www.velomad.com/ to see about their longggggg ride. Speaking of rides the Tour Down Under will be rolling through our area for about a week next week. It will be Lance Armstrongs last race outside of the states so it should be awesome to see him and the pros all rolling through town. I have yet to get a bike here but am banking on it being a terrible time to buy since there will be mass excitement due to the Tour. The same theory that says you should buy skis in the summer rather than the first snowfall. I think that is all for now, here is a link to the tour down under: http://www.tourdownunder.com.au/

Steelers!!!!

This morning I was able to watch the Steelers dominate the Browns at 4:30 in the morning here in Australia. It will probably go down as one of the most memorable games for me I’ve ever watched. This is not due to the game being spectacular, but just the setting involved. Nearly four days ago I was at a pub with Toff, we were having a beer and saying hello to Toff’s wife Cara who works at the pub. While I was there I had a brief chat with the manager because he noticed my Steelers hat and commented on being a fan. I was curious if I could watch a replay of the game at the pub, and wondered about their power to get games easily. It turns out that they could only have it if it was scheduled programming on basic cable channels they receive. We looked it up when we got home and found out that the game would be broadcast live, on time which meant to me that I would not be able to watch it because the pub would be closed. Instead the manager invited us all to his house to watch the live broadcast accompanied by coffee, tea, and a delicious breakfast of homemade bread, with bacon and eggs. I really can’t begin to describe how honored I felt that he even wanted to do this as an idea, let alone to follow through with it. Cara and Toff came along and I know that I am surrounded by some of the best people you can be around. Who else would wake up at 4:00 A.M. with you to go watch a game that doesn’t really mean much to them? I am simply astounded. I also want to trash talk and say that this would never happen to a Redskins or Cowboys fan. Only a Steelers fan can begin to dream of such an experience. I offer solid proof that Steeler Nation is a global entity capable of incredible good in the world. Myron Cope says that terrible towels only care about the Steelers but I think they have more power than most realize.

My time here has been incredible so far. I feel as though time has been moving at the speed of light, and at the same time feel as though I’ve been here forever. It seems like every night is a BBQ at someone else house and I seem to walk away with a Christmas gift from someone I’ve never even met before. I started my job last week too which so far is really really cool. I like it already because I will get to do different things every day, and get to use my mind for a lot of problem solving and figuring things out. It has been cool learning about the different things that go into making wine, while getting dirty and physically exerting myself.

I decided that for new years eve I was going to drink 12 Cooper’s Sparkling Ales. This decision was made the other day after I had two Sparkling’s and decided that I really liked the beer, and was enjoying myself. I ended up getting through 11 before I started to hit a wall of exhaustion. I decided that I needed energy so I drank a red bull and went on a grog sodden run around 11 in the evening. What a strange decision, it made me feel really bizarre for about 20 minutes and then I felt a lot better. We walked to the beach after and enjoyed fireworks and beer and even went for a swim. It was a very unique way to celebrate bringing in the New Year for me and will be an experience I will always remember. I am trying to come up with a list of things that are different in Aus, and last night discovered that pool is played differently. First instead of solids and stripes, they are bigs and littles denoting the size of the white holes on the balls. It is kind of strange and it took me a bit to wrap my mind around the naming process. Then if you ever hit the other player’s ball before your own, they get two shots in a row, and same with scratching. The balls are also a lot smaller and its just a little strange at first.

Tomorrow I will post a list of terms in Aussie and American to match together. And maybe think of more creative things to say, and possibly post some pictures. It is so beautiful here and I am happy to have it as my home for the upcoming months.

I am becoming obsessed with the Steelers more and more regardless of how far away I am from Pittsburgh and it is a weird phenomenon. I also should say that it is a bummer the Pens lost to the Caps in the winter classic, but though it was a dramatic setting it was no game 7. Come to think of it the Caps always choke in the playoffs so I hope they enjoy the temporary thrill.

Dream from last night

I promise that I will post something interesting and relevant soon. For now my friends have been fascinated in the morning my my accounts of dreaming the night previous. Here is an account of last night. Enjoy and the next post will be informative and interesting!

The dream started with me driving my parents’ old Ford Bronco II, a car we retired years ago through what seemed like Western Pennsylvania in winterish weather. The trees had no leaves, the sun was low in the sky, but there wasn’t snow that I could discern. I was driving though winding roads past dark trees with no real colors other than brown and it was slowly getting dark. I needed to get to the computer store as I had an important idea in my head of what I needed.

What I needed was a device that would simultaneously be an external hard drive for my laptop, and also a source of internet. In my dream you could have a simple device that contained internet from within. There were no monthly fees, no cords, and no bills once you made one payment to obtain the internet as such. I finally arrive at the store and two women in their mid forties helped me find what I was looking for. The device seemed perfect but I was worried about the cost. In the real world such a device would likely cost an arm and a leg. The price they quoted to me was $19.94 and I committed to purchase that moment as it was such a great deal. The price was strange to me because it is likely that 1994 is close to the time when the car I was driving died, well before I was old enough to drive in real life.

The device looked to be about the size of a record player, with a keyboard on it. The laptop was strangely suspended only a few inches above the device allowing you the use of both keyboards. You could even type with one hand on the top keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the other letters on the bottom keyboard with the opposing hand, to form smooth sentences, such as this run-on here. After obtaining the device I drove to what in my dream was my Grandparents house. I never saw my grandparents as this seemed to be a sort of house sitting mission. I got there and gathered with a random assortment of relatives that shared the house sitting mantra, and were very curious to see my new internet device.

Shortly after fiddling with the device everyone went to sleep and it was my watch over the house. It was nighttime and the house was enormous. There was a large body of water that surrounded the house that appeared to be more like a lake than any sort of moat. I was nervous being the only one on watch with such a large property, and the feeling that there was so much to lose. Around what seemed like 4:00 in the morning there was an intrusion and I witnessed two males in their mid-twenties reeling in an immense monstrosity of a fish. The fish appeared to be nearly eight feet long, and had the relative shape of a catfish, but with a much more elegant face. The colors were vibrant yellows and blues, one of the most beautiful fish I can possibly imagine, a true spectacle to behold. At this moment after being awe-struck by the fish I realized that I was there to protect the fish and snapped into action. I quickly ran out with a light to man-handle the perpetrators and they were quick to leave, but not without an attempt to secure the fish. The fish snapped the line in such an effortless wiggle that it made you wonder if the fish was only pretending to be caught in the first place. The intruders sped off into the darkness leaving the property feeling cold and empty.

The next morning I awoke and felt a strong need to make contact with the fish. I decided I would cast out with what looked like the least hostile lure I could find. It was a beautiful day and I was looking forward to basking in the sunlight on the green grassy banks by the water. I caught the fish so rapidly though that there was no time to enjoy the sunlight. Once I had the fish there didn’t seem much reason as to why I wanted to catch him in the first place. I showed him to my relatives at the house, and took some pictures both in and out of the water seeing as I had a waterproof camera. The pictures were stunning and I figured they would be invaluable to show all of my friends.

It then became time to leave so we loaded the car and sped off towards the hockey-rink for a back-yard style holiday fundraising hockey game. The rink was crowded with people in jeans, no skates, no pads or helmets, who were wearing white shirts that either demonstrated they played for the Penguins or the Pucks. The scene was one notch shy of pandemonium as there must have been nearly 200 people on the ice. I was devastated to see one player for the pucks (who appeared to be a professional basketball player) scoring repeatedly against the Penguins. I knew that if I was playing things would be alright, I was filled with so much passion for this seemingly meaningless game that I knew I would be the difference maker. I talked to the guards to be allowed into the rink showing them the white Penguins shirt I conveniently had in my hands. They would not allow me in seeing as me Penguins shirt was for Penguins Rugby! I was devastated how could I make such a mistake! Being quick-witted I began showing them pictures of the fish, sure that this would be my ticket into the hockey game. They really liked the pictures but would not let me in. They then began commenting that they believed the pictures to be illegal and they needed to get proper authorities to deal with the matter.

Things were starting to feel desperate and I felt sure I was running out of time. I turned to run and turned over in my bed, coming to and realizing it is a beautiful January morning in Australia and quickly remembered to think about my dream so that I wouldn’t forget it.