A night away

Day 6 -

We woke up at Jack’s and he was a great host. He made us toast with vegemite, which we really liked, cereal and orange juice. We played a little Call of Duty until Drew and Georgia showed up randomly. They were nice.

Pat picked us up around 12 from Jack’s. We went back to Ross’ and showered up. Jack came over and we walked down the street to play a little bit of basketball at Freya and Erika's house, but they weren’t home. After a few games, we went back to Ross’ and tossed the football for a while. Drew showed up and we went back to the basketball hoops. We played a ton of horse and had a dunk competition or two. We got creative and attempted a shot rivaling some on the “Dude Perfect” videos. It was about 60 feet, on top of a mail box and over some tall trees. We each tried it at least 30 times, and the flip video ran out of batteries. Ross told me I would never make the shot, I replied with “Don’t tell me what I can’t do” (at which point he made a 30-rock reference “you’re not my Dad!”) and then everyone started slow clapping. I lined up the shot, spun the ball in my hands. Jumped off the mail box as high as I could, and released. The seams of the ball tumbled end over end toward the basket. As I landed on the soft grass, the ball was lost from sight. All clapping stopped. A clean *shwoosh* and screams came from behind the wall of trees. We all lost it. It was so perfect. SO PERFECT! And we didn’t get it on video.......

We dropped off Jack, returned to Ross’ and ate some super good chicken enchiladas. Yumm! After that we closed the night watching Tosh.O and going to bed early. Ross has school tomorrow. Sucker!!

Shark Week Begins...

Day 5 - Urunga

I woke up earlier than the other two boys and ate breakfast. Everyone else went to the beach, and I stayed back to wait for Liam and Ross to get out of bed. When they finally got up, we had a solid workout consisting of power cleans, bench press, shoulder burn-outs, etc. As we finished up, Diantha came back to the house and took us to the beach. Luke, Jack, and Fergus (Jack’s dog) tagged along. We got to the beach and the weather was gloomy. It was kinda chilly, kinda windy, and kinda dark. Gloomy. We went into the water expecting to be freezing, but it had nothing on the Oregon coast waters. Once we got in all the way, it was actually quite nice. We body boarded on the 4-6 foot waves, which are pretty freaking huge! We came in and started playing with a football. The Aussies taught us how to throw a ball the “proper” way, and then we told them they were wrong and helped them do it the right way. We started up a game of 2v2 football (the right way) with Ross as the all-time QB. Early in the game, Pat told us that they had found an 8 foot shark washed up a kilometer or two down the beach. We took off running...

When we got there, a guy was starting to cut out the shark’s jaw. I guess that was alright though, because the body was just gonna be washed back into the ocean and decompose, why not take a trophy? He left and we decided to take pictures with it. Too bad the camera was TWO KILOMETERS AWAY AT THE CAR! Obviously, I was the one voted to run back and get it... so I did.

We had a lot of fun with the shark. Looking back, it seems a little weird to be playing with the body of a dead fish, but whatever, it was worth it. Here are some pictures (more on facebook):

After pushing Phil’s (thats what we named him) body back into the sea, we washed up and went back to Ross’ to eat grilled cheese and drink cokes. After about two hours, Luke left to work and Jack took his dog home. We watched our videos of the shark, uploaded the pictures, and made up a story about how we wrestled it to death.

Later in the evening, ate dinner and then went to the pub. After a few hours we went back to Jack’s for the night. Great day!

Urunga!

Day 4 - Urunga

Liam and I woke up to an empty house around 8:30. Ross had left for school (sucka!), as did Diantha, Pat had gone fishing with a friend, and Diantha’s two friends had gone on a walk. Liam and I took this opportunity to relax a bit and write/post the blog. The pictures took a while to upload because of the dial-up internet. After about two hours of blogging, we went on a short walk around the block. When we came back to the house, I found a blue-tongued lizard just outside the back door catching some rays.

I took a short nap and when I woke up, Pat was back. He drove us into town and dropped us off near a nice walking location. We spent a few hours walking on a beautiful path to the beach.

After our walk we were famished, so Liam and I stopped at a corner store to buy a couple snacks. We got Australian salt and vinegar potato chips (honestly, I have no idea how they differ from American chips) and a hazelnut snickers bar each. Pat picked us up around 3:30 and we arrived at the house around the same time that Ross did. We hung out for a while, trying to figure out what to do. I took yet another short nap and woke up around 7:30 to a dinner of hamburgers with beets, which were quiet scrumptious. After the meal, Ross invited over a few of his friends and we walked around town. They were very nice and we exchanged questions about each others countries and people. Their names were Freya, Erika, and Luke. The girls were twins and we wound up at their house until about 2 in the morning. Thank goodness for the naps! We spent most of the time talking and watching football and rugby. We returned to Ross’ house and crashed.