Haven't been able to post for a few days due to our BNE schedule. 4am now (my usual wake-up time), so have a bit to catch up before our 5:45 bus to the open sides' hotel and 6:30 bus to coffs.
fri evening got to have dinner with the family and bendi, which was delightful. then on the plane to fiji. I was told to try to sleep on the back end of the trip, so that i'd wake up aus morning, so i was looking forward to the movie selection. naturally, my clock had other things to say about that, but i ended up rested enough. i did get to watch Kingsmen (indi was right: pretty good), Exodus (Rotstein: 1, Ahmed: 0), Ex Machina (good enough scifi thriller), and some of Love, Rosie (boring british love story), and got maybe 4-5 hours sleep on the 11 hour leg. got into fiji like 5am, and the three of us (Tim from the M40 and Nate from M30 with me) just killed time in the hyper-modern (cough) fiji airport. couldn't get their wifi to work, either because the registration page was broken or because my card was being denied. (since i've used it here in aus since then, must have been the former). after a few hours there, on to BNE.
BNE flight got to watch whatever that madagascar spin-off with the penguins is, then just read (since no wifi -- fiji airlines is not the best). arrived in BNE, and we followed our extremely precise instructions of "when you exit, go either right or left, then you'll find a familiar usa touch face". this, apparently, meant find teh charter bus area and Jean (our USAT admin) will be there. in practice, the three of us found the charter bus area, and no one was around. for an hour. we eventually figured out the other flight with our crew was delayed, so they all showed up a bit later, then our bus with Jean was delayed, but it all eventually happened. #afterthought (our joke for all of phoenix when the senior sides were less-than-optimally planned for)
because of the lateness, we went straight to the redlands touch complex. redlands is a burb outside of brisbane, apparently quite into touch. they had a huge clubhouse, a dozen or so fields, and national-class touch teams. all of our sides got to do some warmup sessions, then play the corresponding redlands team. no one was in good shape yet, and we went 0-5, but it gave everyone a chance to see what to work on. they then had a big barbecue in their clubhouse, and all was well. the mayor was even around to welcome us. it was all pretty funny, seeing the difference in the touch scene between here and the US; some of the boys were even talking about how some counter girls at the airport were squealing when they saw we were national touch players AND from the USA...
we then piled into our overcrowded buses and headed to our nearby motel, in which we had every room in the place. it featured a single physical key per room, wifi that allows one login per person and you have to log out when not using it, and a single laundry machine that locks at 7pm. we had an M30 team session and watched our footage from the day and discussed what to work on. back to the rooms, and delighted to find the first thing when you turn a tv on is rugby (even though it's league). happily fell asleep at 8:30p, and happily woke up at 4:30a monday morning.
monday, went to breakfast at the open sides' nearby hotel (much nicer than ours, #afterthought), then back to the redlands facility for practice sessions. we were looking a lot better then, and had a game against the Barbarians, the oldest touch club in the world (42 years). we smoked them, and generally were playing a lot better. we then scrimmaged the M40, and both won and played well, and then the MO, where we were tied 2-2 until the last couple minutes, where they did some good steps and snuck some in. but in general, we looked on fire; everyone was extremely pleased that every single game we were making leaps and bounds, and really gelling. so things are going well for us right now.
we broke for lunch and cooldown at the hotel, then had an afternoon walk-through in a park to adjust some of our moves/strategies. then dinner at the open side hotel, then early bed again (after managing to get our laundry back), and now i'm off to the bus for Coffs in a few hours. if i'm lucky i'll be able to get the gsheets offline working, because i need to set up the touch spring league schedule for back home, which takes a little spreadsheet programming i haven't gotten to yet here (except, now i realize we were planning to do it in the NYRC site, so i've got to maybe figure that out instead). at least i managed to get some president@nyrc work done yesterday, which was important because we were blocked on getting our some summer practice fields from the Empire, but we managed to sort that out. oh, and my tmobile doesn't appear to be working down here, so need to sort that as well.
hopefully the schedule/wifi will work better down in Coffs, and i'll be able to keep up better here and with admin duties back home. and haven't checked work in a couple days, so need to get back on top of that.
fri evening got to have dinner with the family and bendi, which was delightful. then on the plane to fiji. I was told to try to sleep on the back end of the trip, so that i'd wake up aus morning, so i was looking forward to the movie selection. naturally, my clock had other things to say about that, but i ended up rested enough. i did get to watch Kingsmen (indi was right: pretty good), Exodus (Rotstein: 1, Ahmed: 0), Ex Machina (good enough scifi thriller), and some of Love, Rosie (boring british love story), and got maybe 4-5 hours sleep on the 11 hour leg. got into fiji like 5am, and the three of us (Tim from the M40 and Nate from M30 with me) just killed time in the hyper-modern (cough) fiji airport. couldn't get their wifi to work, either because the registration page was broken or because my card was being denied. (since i've used it here in aus since then, must have been the former). after a few hours there, on to BNE.
BNE flight got to watch whatever that madagascar spin-off with the penguins is, then just read (since no wifi -- fiji airlines is not the best). arrived in BNE, and we followed our extremely precise instructions of "when you exit, go either right or left, then you'll find a familiar usa touch face". this, apparently, meant find teh charter bus area and Jean (our USAT admin) will be there. in practice, the three of us found the charter bus area, and no one was around. for an hour. we eventually figured out the other flight with our crew was delayed, so they all showed up a bit later, then our bus with Jean was delayed, but it all eventually happened. #afterthought (our joke for all of phoenix when the senior sides were less-than-optimally planned for)
because of the lateness, we went straight to the redlands touch complex. redlands is a burb outside of brisbane, apparently quite into touch. they had a huge clubhouse, a dozen or so fields, and national-class touch teams. all of our sides got to do some warmup sessions, then play the corresponding redlands team. no one was in good shape yet, and we went 0-5, but it gave everyone a chance to see what to work on. they then had a big barbecue in their clubhouse, and all was well. the mayor was even around to welcome us. it was all pretty funny, seeing the difference in the touch scene between here and the US; some of the boys were even talking about how some counter girls at the airport were squealing when they saw we were national touch players AND from the USA...
we then piled into our overcrowded buses and headed to our nearby motel, in which we had every room in the place. it featured a single physical key per room, wifi that allows one login per person and you have to log out when not using it, and a single laundry machine that locks at 7pm. we had an M30 team session and watched our footage from the day and discussed what to work on. back to the rooms, and delighted to find the first thing when you turn a tv on is rugby (even though it's league). happily fell asleep at 8:30p, and happily woke up at 4:30a monday morning.
monday, went to breakfast at the open sides' nearby hotel (much nicer than ours, #afterthought), then back to the redlands facility for practice sessions. we were looking a lot better then, and had a game against the Barbarians, the oldest touch club in the world (42 years). we smoked them, and generally were playing a lot better. we then scrimmaged the M40, and both won and played well, and then the MO, where we were tied 2-2 until the last couple minutes, where they did some good steps and snuck some in. but in general, we looked on fire; everyone was extremely pleased that every single game we were making leaps and bounds, and really gelling. so things are going well for us right now.
we broke for lunch and cooldown at the hotel, then had an afternoon walk-through in a park to adjust some of our moves/strategies. then dinner at the open side hotel, then early bed again (after managing to get our laundry back), and now i'm off to the bus for Coffs in a few hours. if i'm lucky i'll be able to get the gsheets offline working, because i need to set up the touch spring league schedule for back home, which takes a little spreadsheet programming i haven't gotten to yet here (except, now i realize we were planning to do it in the NYRC site, so i've got to maybe figure that out instead). at least i managed to get some president@nyrc work done yesterday, which was important because we were blocked on getting our some summer practice fields from the Empire, but we managed to sort that out. oh, and my tmobile doesn't appear to be working down here, so need to sort that as well.
hopefully the schedule/wifi will work better down in Coffs, and i'll be able to keep up better here and with admin duties back home. and haven't checked work in a couple days, so need to get back on top of that.
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| Dinner at Lady Gunboats (or something), some pretty good place on Sawtelle in LA |
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| LAX, omw to Fiji Air, travelling in our mandatory canterbury gear. I'm still carrying Martin's and Mark Bowker's gear, so i have a giant bag to check. |
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| Fiji air, just chillin'. I forget which movie this is. But i haven't accidentally fallen asleep yet. |
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| 5am fiji "international transit" section, where, like all island nations, they have dudes with tiny island guitars singing churb songs in their native language. i think it's sunday morning? |
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| this is what fiji looks like |
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| this is what Brisbane looks like. |
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| well, that was what BNE looked like. _this_ is what brisbane looks like, when you're waiting at the charter bus area with no connection to your host and most of your team is mysteriously missing and your driver is an hour behind schedule. |
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| but, finally, the bus arrives, the whole (most) of the team is together. the M40 are a good crew, too, so we enjoy hanging out with them. we couldn't figure out how to open the "auto" bus door for like 5 minutes, so we ended up crawling in through the back, until someone was like "seriously, you never unlocked it". i feel like we should k-court whoever didn't figure that out... |
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| driving to redlands, outside of Brisbane. shame we were a bit away from Brisbane, or i'd have gotten to hook up with some mates from the Brisbane Bulldogs, NYRC's sister club. |
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| I like an "adult superstore" being next to "Healthy Habits". but yeah, all the brisbane mini-towns look like this (small downtown stripmalls), and they all have adult stores. aussies know what they like. |
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| disembarking at the redlands touch facility with our luggage, since we didn't get to our motel first |
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| getting ready for our warmup session then game against the redlands M30 |
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| panorama shot including the clubhouse and the nearby game fields. way more off to the left, including practice fields and a pool. |
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| their really nice touch clubhouse, better than any rugby clubhouse in nyc. |
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| their mayor came by to welcome us and try to convince us that redlands was cool. she should have started by saying how we could get laid by saying we're touch players... |
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| rugby on TV all day, you say? hooray! |
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| i found out this guy Tracey is on the mixed side (MXO), but it's not clear if he's playing or support |
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| creepy though |
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| 7am breakfast at the open side hotel, with the excited women's team behind me. monday morning. |
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| back at the redlands facility, ready to play the barbarians |
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| us stomping the babarians. good for us. ready to move on to more afternoon warmup games, then coffs the next day. |
