Train Lady advice

Between Town Hall and Central today, after reading out the stops, the train lady announcer gave the following advice:

"Have a great weekend and stay safe. Remember to be kind to one another and most of all, be kind to yourself."

So listen to the wise train lady, boys and girls, and have a kind and generous weekend.

-

Race Day

Penitentiary Beatdowns

Riley's Question

On our last night in Cairns, Riley Best asked Ben and Phil what they thought the key skill was that differentiated the good creekers from the bad.

Both simultaneously answered, 'rolling' on the basis that a strong roll widens your horizons like nothing else.

Beyond that? asked Riley.

'Water skills, I guess... edging, feeling the water, being in the right place...'

Understandably this didn't satisfy Riley.

On the way home, I thought some more about how Riley wanted to know a specific skill so that he could work towards it. And it occurred to me that that approach may be the wrong way round. I think you need to know the best way to learn a skill first.

Bear with me here.

Ask anyone who paddles in plastic what they think of slalom paddlers and they'll tell you they are boring. They are boring because they go round the same courses again and again. They practice the same moves again and again. They can spend hours on one eddy. It's not the time slalom paddlers spend on the water that plastic boaters think is boring, but how they spend that time.

Yet, we all know if we want to learn how to do something, it takes practice. You need to be able to learn from your mistakes immediately, adjust, and analyse whether your second attempt was an improvement or not. And then do it again.

The nature of river running denies plastic boaters this opportunity to improve as quickly. You get on at the top, you run the river, you get off, and you most likely don't paddle that river again for several weeks (months or years if you paddle in NSW or VIC).

Of all the paddlers at Chrystal Cascades in the week leading up to the Monsoon Madness race, many of them ran the course, some even two or three times. But I bet all of them had a weak move on that course, one drop that they suspected they would mess up. How much do you think they would have improved on that move if they'd spent one hour repeating it in place of one full run down the course?

Of course, you could just take this as a slalom perspective and keep practicing your first key skill instead: rolling.

Monsoon Madness Day 6 - 7

The day started with Lachie Carracher running No Fear at Chrystal Cascades.

And being rescued by Phil.

Who then took a shower.

Behana is b-e-a-utiful. It really looks like this.


It's 3km from the car park up to the top of the falls.


Unfortunately, this is about the distance it takes to wear though a Wavesport.

Everyone else had fun though.

Well, Micah Lyall may not have been having fun at exactly this moment in time:

Day 7 largely consisted of Ben joining Joey in the land of ill sooks. Phil had what D.H.Lawrence would describe as 'the misery of ill-temper'. Or a hangover.

Camping out at Chrystal Cascades for the day meant the Invertor was run several times, with predictable results.

Monsoon Madness Day 5

On Wednesday, the boys ran the North Johnson river, about an hour south of Cairns. Up before light, in the car at 6am and after a quick stop at Maccas, I left them facing the hour and a half walk in at 9am. I had 6 hours to kill before I could expect them at the get out. Easy - I'm surrounded by National Parks, I'll take a walk. 

There's something about backpacks that makes me feel really adventurous. Even though mine was far from being filled with sensible things (lavash breads, salsa, smoked mackerel, swimmers and a camera) I nevertheless felt energised with some girl guide spirit as I set of into the rainforest.

I'm going to assume that you, like me, think rainforests look like this:

I now know that this is not the case. The rainforest is dark and wild and Walt Disney was clearly misinformed when he produced Fern Gully.

A tickley-itch at my ankle soon alerted me to a leach. I grabbed at it, pulled it, and it just stretched whilst its face remained at my skin, sucking my blood. After a second, more panicky grab my oldest-sister-of-two-brothers instinct kicked in and I flicked the bastard off me with a killer, well-aimed finger nail that has been known to near produce tears when applied to sibling ears. Bam. Leach terminated. 

On the bright side, I thought, I'll be able to tell the boys I had a leach episode. That'll impress them.

This was, however, a walk that covered many, many waterfalls. My leach adventures turned into an ongoing saga and my flicks became incredibly accurate and deadly strong. 

Believe it or not, there were enough distractions along the walk that the leaches did not ruin my afternoon. 

At one stage, I found a 1.5m long snake skin across the path left all ghostly and wrinkly and strangely appealing. After letting my inner child prod at it with sticks, I continued on my journey revived by the discovery. Only to nearly tread on a very much alive and hissing black snake. This one was maybe only a metre long, but something inherent and ancient in my brain realised very quickly that I was most definitely well within striking distance. I have never stopped so fast in my life. Within two seconds it had slithered speedily off the path, all the while keeping its beady eyes and hissy tongue pointed right at me. 

We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

I stopped shortly after for another leach bashing sessions. Flick-bam, flick-bam. Four in one go from one stream crossing. After congratulating myself on my improved leach-flicking efficiency, I started off again with what I have to say was a bit of a British this-rainforest-shan't-get-the-better-of-me pace. 

Only to walk into a spider web. 

Step back. Scratch web off. Yurgh. Do it faster because this is one sticky-ass web. Ergh. Is anything crawling on me? No. Don't open your eyes yet, way too much web for that. Ewww. Anything crawling? No. Finally open my eyes. 

Above the Heather-sized hole in the web is this Golden Orb spider:

I won't say it was the size of my hand because that would be lying. But it was bloody close to the size of my hand.

For the next 20 minutes I walked scanning the path in the distance for snakes and then scanning the closer head height view for spiders. After a while my precautionary measures just made me dizzy.

I was pretty jumpy for the rest of the walk. My only comforting thought was that at least in Australia there are no tigers or bears to jump out at you and I could ignore the rustling either side of me. 

Near the end of my journey, however, I spotted this track:

I don't care that Emus aren't carnivorous - anything with feet the same size as mine is something I do not want to meet on a semi-dark path in the rainforest. And why do they live in the rainforest anyhow!?

When I finally got to the end and drove to the get out, tired and full of stories, I waited for the boys at the top of the walk out. 

The first thing they had to say to me? 

'Ben nearly got eaten my a crocodile!'

Well, that trumps my story.

Day 1 -4 Monsoon Madness

Day one at Chrystal Cascades - priceless face.

'Joey's just taking a while because he forgot his name is actually Joseph' - Christian at the airport, 5.58am

Lesson 1: do not leave the moon roof open during monsoon season.

115mm in one hour. I did not appreciate what a monsoon meant until last night.

Lesson 2: do not use the railings in Far North Queensland, they are ant highways. 

Barron Falls: Awe-inspiring.

Bank antics > or equal to river antics.

G'day Citizenship

This week I attended my Australian citizenship ceremony. I am now officially Australian. 

It's a very weird concept.

When I'm here I refer to England as home.

In England, Australia is home.

I wasn't born here but I now have exactly the same rights as someone who was. 

If I have a child, no matter who the father is or what country it is born in, it will also be Australian.

The mayor at the ceremony kept saying how proud he was that we 'chose' Australia. But I didn't look at a map and decide Australia was it. Yet since I've been here there have been so many times that I've thought, 'that works for me'. And a 6 week trip turned into an 8 month trip, which became a year and went from there to temporary residency.

At that stage I had to collect concrete evidence and documents to prove a relationship that by definition is subjective and mostly intangible. 

Three years on, I lodged my citizenship application. 

Interestingly, once the Department of Immigration have accepted and approved your application, you are not a citizen until the ceremony.

You are not a citizen until you have said:

From this time forward, 

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and it's people,

Whose democratic beliefs I share,

Whose rights and liberties I respect, and

Whose laws I will obey and uphold.

Five years and nine days since I first landed at Kingsford-Smith... 

HELLO AUSTRALIA!

28 train journeys left

The trains were mental today. Nothing was working. The stations, the people, the trains were all ready to just freak out and give up all together.

Firstly Town Hall station staff were stopping people enter the platforms until arrivals had left the platform. Only those arrivals couldn't get off the platform for all the people waiting to get on the platform...

Then when the trains arrived they were not only already full to the brim but because everyone had been delayed getting to the platform, they were stampeding like cattle to get onto the next train.

I only got my train because a fat lady realized that she wasn't going to fit on the stuffed carriage and gave up the 20cm x 10cm gap to me. 

After a classy sprint to my next train at Central, the train home stopped and started the whole way back. The train driver was either stupid or amusing himself by giving updates over the intercom that were just too quiet to hear. 

After the third update, as we were all straining to listen, one lady broke and yelled:

SPEAK UUUUUP!

After an hour and a half on the train, I googled 'what is wrong with Sydney trains today?'

The first site that came up was 'Welcome to CityRail'.

The only person I saw who wasn't trying to make their own situation worse by grumbling and moaning was this little girl. Her state of complete sleep in her father's arms really made me smile.

Can't you just smell the camp fire?

Snake River, Wyoming 

River, boat, tent, campfire, s'mores, damper ingredients, heaven?