The Australian Open

Can you tell that it is summer here? So hot!

Woohoo-my computer is FINALLY fixed! I'm not even going to go into the things I had to do to get it to work; I'm just happy it does. Anyway, back to the blogging. For two weeks in January, the Australian Open was the focus of Melbourne and much of the world. Zack's dad and stepmom flew into town and enjoyed several days of tennis. I joined them on Tuesday of the first week with a grounds pass, which allows you to see several matches on various courts throughout the day.

Dokic (Australian) and her Russian opponent wore the same outfit! The Aussie won. 

I'm not sure I've ever actually watched a full match of tennis. I pretty much knew the rules and how the game worked, but I've never sat down and really paid attention. I'll admit; I got kind of hooked! There were many late nights over the next week and a half as I stayed up to watch the ends of matches on television.

Players would stop and sign these giant tennis balls after their matches.

I've never been to a tennis tournament, but the Australian Open seemed extremely well organized and executed. The ball kids were especially impressive; you could tell they had been carefully trained. The crowds were fun, shouting "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" and leading slow motion and extra-fast waves. But when the tennis players played, people were so quiet! 

On Tuesday evening, Zack joined us after work at the Rod Laver Arena to watch the evening matches between Aussie favorite Lleyton Hewitt and a German guy and then Serena Williams versus an Austrian. Hewitt's match lasted nearly four hours; we were exhausted just watching it! But he won in the end.

Some of these serves are around 200 km/hour (123 miles/hour)!

Lleyton Hewitt wins his match after nearly four hours!

It was a warm summer night, and after spending all day sweating in the sun, I was tired by midnight. But I was excited to stay and see Serena Williams. She is a beast! Seriously, she is built like a man-so muscular and strong. She's actually won the Australian Open a few times (not this year). But she easily beat her opponent in the first set on the night we were there, so we headed home to get to bed at nearly 2 am!

Overall, the Australian Open was pretty cool, and it was a neat to be a part of the action. I'm glad Melbourne hosts such a major event and that tickets weren't too difficult to get. I've definitely learned to understand and appreciate tennis much more.

When My Computer is Fixed...

The Australian mail service continues to be unimpressive (though the ladies at the post office are very nice). I still have not received the disk from Apple so I can reinstall my hard drive and this computer will work on a regular basis. At the moment, it is allowing me to type, but if I even try to open iPhoto, I know the whole thing will freeze up. Yesterday, I couldn't even get the computer to turn on. The Apple office that sent the disk is located in Tasmania; I wish I could just hop on the overnight ferry and go get it myself! Alas, I must wait. They tell me it will be here by tomorrow at the latest.

When my computer is fixed, here are the entries I need to catch up on (you are eagerly looking forward to these, right?):

-Australian Open
-Big Day Out
-Zack's parents' visit (Great Ocean Road)
-Australia Day
-my birthday
-boat ride down the Yarra River
-the rest of my Uluru trip

I hate falling behind, but such is life. I hope to be up and running again soon!

Uluru in the Rain

Well, since my computer's still not working, I'll start the Uluru posts I've been saving for awhile. This one has been in draft form for awhile, so maybe it'll upload and hold you over until I get things up and running again. I know you've all been missing my posts terribly-hahaha! 

After my parents and brother and sister-in-law left in mid-November, my sister Morgan stayed an extra week in Australia. We took a short trip to Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, which is a huge sandstone formation in the middle of the Outback. It's over 1000 feet high and two miles long, and it's pretty darn famous.

No, Uluru does not usually have a big cloud over it!

Anyway, we checked the weather report before leaving, and it said there would be rain showers. Now, you have to understand, this rock is in the middle of the desert. Yulara (the "city" that Uluru is in) regularly reaches temperatures near 100 degrees (Fahrenheit) during the day at this time of year. So we packed mostly shorts and tank tops, threw a pair of pants and a raincoat in our suitcases for the rain shower we expected would pass through quickly to cool us off, and called it good. Little did we know we would be wearing the same thing for three days straight and that the rain would never really stop.

Morgan says, "What is up with the rain in the desert?"

We got there on November 20. As we were landing, the thing that struck me was the bright red color of the dirt. I'd say it is even redder than Moab, Utah, and that's pretty red! Also, I was surprised at all of the plants, bushes, and short trees that covered the land. I thought it would be more barren.

The walking "trail" around the rock.

Morgan and I got our rental car and headed out in the rain. Yes, rain. Lots of it. Never-ending (seriously). And it was kind of chilly. But we were in the middle of nowhere, and darn it, we were still going to walk around the rock. So we did the six mile hike in the pouring rain. At some points, we literally had to wade through knee-deep water. But it was worth it. There were hundreds of waterfalls pouring down Uluru, and it was amazing. Apparently only 3% of people get to see Uluru in the rain, so we were lucky. Over the next few days, we didn't always feel that way, but I'll admit it was pretty incredible. And from some searches I've done, some of the pictures we were able to get are pretty rare. My good camera actually got so wet it stopped working for awhile (yikes!), so some of these are actually phone pictures or taken with Morgan's little point and shoot camera.

If you happened upon my blog somehow and want to steal some pictures, please don't. :)

The Aboriginal people still own and live on this land. We actually saw a couple of Aboriginal kids playing around the rock, running barefoot down the path and under a fence (they can go wherever they want!). The visitor's centre had all sorts of interesting information about the history of the land, the food and tools of the Aboriginal people, and their beliefs about Uluru. This is a picture of some rock engravings we found while on our walk.

Green trees in the Outback-who knew?

After our walk, we set up camp in the back of our car (thank goodness we got an upgrade to an SUV!), since the campground at Ayers Rock Resort was flooded. We cooked up some chili and tried to stay dry. Ayers Rock Resort is really the only manmade thing that you can find in the vicinity of Uluru. It's a complex with a campground, cabins, fancier accommodation options, a few touristy stores, a post office, gas station, medical centre, grocery store, a couple of restaurants, etc. The campground was $36 a night (ripoff), but at least we could warm up in the showers and dry a load of soaking wet clothes.

It rained all night, but we slept decently well in the back of the SUV. In the morning, we put on the same pants and raincoats and headed out for our next adventure. Stay tuned for more!

Pranked

My Macbook Pro is not working so well right now. Luckily, I purchased the Apple Care Protection Plan when I bought it a couple of years ago, so it's covered, but I'm waiting on a disk to come in the mail so I can reinstall the entire operating system. Fun. That's why the blog has been quiet lately, and while I'm able to write this post at the moment, I definitely won't be attempting to attach pictures. That's just asking too much.

Zack's dad and stepmom Vickie are in town, and we've been busy driving down the Great Ocean Road and enjoying the Australian Open. There will be posts with pictures when my computer works! In the meanwhile, I'll tell you an amusing story about something that happened to me while I was running home from the gym today.

I was running along St Kilda Beach, excited about almost being home, when a guy standing in front of his car (with the hood up) stopped me. I pulled my headphones out of my ears and he repeated his question, "Do you know much about cars?" I answered, "No, not really...just how to check the oil." Then he asked me to touch this one tube near the engine while he "turned it over." He walked to the side of the car, I touched the tube, and white smoke started puffing out of the engine area. He asked, "What did you do?" and told me to try it again.  Again, white smoke came out, but I kind of knew it was something he was doing over on the side of the car that was causing it.

At this point, two simultaneous thoughts went through my head. 1. This is a prank of some sort. 2. This guy is trying to get me to "break" his car and then he's going to try to blame me and make me pay! He kept saying things like, "You're causing this" and "You have some sort of bad car karma." He told me to do it again, and I told him to do whatever he was doing on the side of the car without me touching the tube. He said that he was just "leaning on the car." At this point, I wasn't going to "incriminate" myself further, so I kind of just stared at him and didn't touch the tube.

Finally he kind of started laughing and revealed that the whole thing was being filmed for PrankTV, a show on ABC or something. He pointed out a few big video cameras in the nearby bushes and had me sign a waiver to be on television. I don't think they'll actually use footage of me, because my reaction wasn't that exciting or extreme, but who knows? It won't be aired until March or April, and I'm sure I'll never actually see the show, but it's amusing to think about anyway.

I watched from a distance for a little while he pranked other people who passed by. He really pumped out the smoke for one guy, who actually took off running (I think he thought the car was going to blow up!). Anyway, that was my entertaining occurrence for the day. It's funny that I was so oblivious to the large cameras that weren't too far away.

Well, my computer has already frozen up twice and had to be restarted four times while writing this post, so I'm going to quit while I can. Hopefully the disk to fix it comes tomorrow!

Cool Coke Cans

The Coca-Cola Company in Australia has been running a new ad campaign lately, where they urge you to "Share a Coke with ______". They've picked 150 of the most common Australian first names and put them on Coke bottles. Zack has one, even though it's spelled "Zach." It's fun to see them on the shelves on the store and find names of people you know, including Justin, Dave, Victoria, etc. There's even a Facebook page dedicated to this ad campaign, complete with individualized songs for each name you can find on a can.

Some of the more interesting (supposedly common) names include Callum, Fadi, Lachlan, Rhys, and Wen. Of course, even with all of those, there is no "Share a Coke with Aubree" can! But before Christmas, you were able to go to a kiosk in Sydney and create your own personalized little Coke can for free. So when Zack was there for work, he got one made for me. Hooray! I think I will keep it forever. How many years until Coke goes bad?!

In late January, they'll be adding 50 more names, including "Bree" and "Audrey." Hey, that's getting closer to Aubree, right? :)

Mountain Biking and a Monotreme

Zack tackles an obstacle with ease.

On Saturday, Zack and I drove to Lysterfield Park to do some mountain biking. This park, which is about forty-five minutes away from our place, has tons of trails through the woods. We rode some good singletrack, especially enjoying the trails that were specifically for bikers. My favorite part was finding wallabies and kangaroos throughout our ride. You haven't really lived until a mother and baby kangaroo hop across the path in front of you while you're biking!

I wanted a shot with me riding near the pretty flowers.

There were also tons of butterflies flying around, just like on our Great Ocean Road hike, and pretty purple wildflowers along the path. There were some challenging, technical parts, which Zack could handle better than me, and some of the uphill sections kicked my butt, but it was still a good time.

These two kangaroos later hopped in front of me on the bike path!

On our drive out of the park, Zack yelled "porcupine" and hit the brakes. I immediately knew that he had seen an echidna (pronounced uh-KID-nuh), and I'd been wanting to see one in the wild for a long time. I raced out of the car with my camera, and sure enough, this spiky guy was crawling around in the grass near the road!





Echidnas are also known as spiny anteaters. The bottom left of this picture shows its pointy snout. Along with the platypus, echidnas are the only monotremes (egg-laying mammals) in the world, and they can only be found in Australia and New Guinea. Pretty cool, huh?

As we got closer, this echidna balled up and stuck out his spines. This picture shows a close-up of the prickly-ness. We didn't try to pet it!

Mountain biking in Australia is a bit different than it was in Colorado or Utah. Kangaroos instead of deer surprise you in the woods. Dirt paths with tree roots are more common than the red, rocky terrain. Butterflies surround your head instead of mountaintop views, and an echidna might cross your path instead of a rattlesnake. I'll take it for now!

My Little Lost Ring

While camping on the Great Ocean Road over the holidays, Zack and I took off our wedding rings so as not to lose them in the ocean. The cold water tends to make them pretty loose, and we don't like taking chances that they may fall off. Originally, I had put them in a zipped pocket of my camera bag, but when I found myself bringing my camera bag to the beach nearly every day, I decided that it probably wasn't that smart to leave them in the unattended bag on the beach while we were in the water. So I put them in the upper section of the center console storage compartment of our rental car.

Well, we flipped it open a few times over the next few days to use the lower portion for storing wallets, phones, etc. On Wednesday, when we headed back to Melbourne, we opened the top portion and only saw my engagement ring and birthstone ring sitting there. Both of our wedding bands were missing! Upon shaking the top part a bit, we found Zack's wedding band lodged in the part that flips back, and we were able to pull it out. But mine was still nowhere to be seen!

We searched for awhile around the front seats and center console and then figured it must have dropped behind the seats and that we would find it down there when we unpacked. We got back to Melbourne, took everything out of the car, and it was still missing. I was starting to panic. It's just a plain white gold band, not worth much in monetary value, but the sentimental value is priceless! We had to get the rental car back to the station, so on the drive there, Zack took a screwdriver and tried to take apart the console. That unfortunately didn't give us much access.

We spent some more time at the rental place looking in every nook and cranny of the car, but the ring couldn't be found, so we headed home and hoped it would fall out of something as we unpacked the bags and put things away. No such luck. I was pretty upset that night, but Zack was comforting and urged me to call a mechanic in the morning to see if someone could get into the console. All we could figure was that it had fallen into some crack and was stuck in the plastic piece. I was just glad it wasn't my engagement ring; that would have cost a LOT more to replace!

So the next morning, I called a Hyundai dealership and a few mechanics. Some weren't open because of the holidays, but some said they could try to fit me in. I went back to the rental car place, and they were nice enough to let me "borrow" the car for a few hours to see if I could get my ring back. I drove to the first mechanic; he said he could get to it at some point in the day if I left the car there. I didn't really want to pay for another day's rental, so I drove on to another place, which happened to be closed. Ugh.

But on the same street, there was another auto shop. I randomly pulled in and explained my situation to the guy. He immediately offered to take a look and told me to go sit in the office. Less than ten minutes later, he came in with the console in his hands and said, "You might just be lucky!" as he shook it and we both heard something rattling inside! Sure enough, my ring was in there! He basically had to pry a gap in the seams of the plastic to be able to shake the ring out; he had no idea how it possibly could have even gotten in there. I didn't care; I was just ecstatic to have my ring back! He didn't even charge me anything; he was just glad that the story had a happy ending. So nice!

So the whole incident only cost me a couple of hours on a Thursday morning-big shout outs to two particular employees (sorry, I don't know their names) at Europcar in St Kilda and Ultra Tune in Prahran for being so kind and letting/helping me find my ring (without charging me anything!). Please give them your business if you have the opportunity.

And that's the story of my little lost ring. Don't you just love a happy ending? I do! <--Ha-get it?