MightyBobX Quotage

Had our one night stay in auckland. auckland definitely is the first city-like thing we've been to since arriving in this hemisphere, and was definitely still a bit sleepy. our wonderful hotel/condo was basically inside the university, so we took a long walk from there to downtown and went to a beer bar ben recommended, then found other local late-night places. we can definitely confirm that the mcdonalds in nz and aus is exactly the same quality as in the US, so i don't want to ever hear kiwis bragging about their mcdonalds anymore. did some laundry this morning, watched cricket and tried to figure out the rules, and now at AKL on our way to ZQN and the road trippy part of the tour :)

Was on the dive boat from Tuesday morning until Wednesday evening, then out last night (wed night). Dive boat was awesome! Amelia, Indi, and I get there bright and early at 7am, and get on the first boat. We get ushered upstairs, where we wait in the special cabin for people doing the overnight (we affectionately refer to this cabin as "the club"). We boat out for a bit, until we meet up with the overnight boat. There, the regular day divers/snorkelers start their stuff, but we get on a mini boat and head over to the overnight boat. Once there, we go into the beautiful saloon area, which is full of really comfy couches, a bar, a tv area, nice dining tables, etc. We get a briefing, then off to the diving.

It was my first time getting to go without guides, so indi and i were always buddies, and we got to do whatever we wanted. We'd get a briefing at each site, including a description of suggested routes and a look at a map, and then we got to dive however we wanted. It's much more enjoyable than having to follow a guide or being in a big group. amelia chose to snorkel most of it, though she did some intro dives as well.

The diving itself was phenomenal; warm water, high visibility, and all the coral and fish of the barrier reef. I also managed to use my go-pro to great effectiveness, wearing it on my hand and holding it in front of me like Pale Man

our team hotel in coffs. undependable hot water, no functioning wifi, but it was our little slice of muddy paradise

the beautiful beach right outside our hotel

a selfie _of_ a selfie?! indi surprised me at the beach

Team USA milling about in our tent

getting ready for games, woo

indi being excited to be with team USA

driving around in the bus, probably to or from a rained out game

on our day off (due to bad weather) we went 9-pin bowling. great artwork at the bowling alley, eh?

while at the bowling alley, we ran into Team China and challenged them to a bowling duel. we won, and indi was all like "ew, china"

take that, team china!

smashed 'em; no big deal

the local pub that was sponsoring team usa; where we ate every morning, night, and day.

indi's all like "ew"

on the bus with team usa, driving back up to brisbane

what a nerd

you can tell the cairn airport gets a lot of asians, because the toilets need to explicitly indicate you should sit on them, not stand on them.

cairns harbor area has a beautiful public wading pool. amelia and indi agree.

a pool destined to be flopped in by drunk people

though, as we discovered last night (while drunk), it closes off and you're not supposed to go in it after hours.

in da club, on our way to the overnight ship

i took it upon myself to give my swim trunks a much needed shortening, so here i am modeling them. the boat's swaying made it pretty hard to stand like this, so indi has a video in which i appear to just randomly fall over.

on the sun deck of our sweet ship. still have that touch farmer's tan...

some sharks and fish swimming around the boat in the evening.

apparently cairns harbor has some epic tidal issues, because this whole bay was just mud, we presume because of low tide.

Didn't win :) In spite of the excellent setup, we reverted to our previous sub-par level and lost to Cook Island in the morning and then PNG mid-day, so we ended up with 4th place. Not bad for a team that just came together a few weeks ago, but definitely lower than we could have gotten.

We all hung around and watched games and swapped jerseys with people; the USA ones were a hot commodity, and it took some discipline to hold on to them for stuff you really wanted. I ended up keeping my blue playing jersey, and getting a japanese one (which was awesome; actually got the one from the big #10 we played against who was a big part of our victory) and a NZ women's for indi, and some other minor stuff. It was nice to be done and finally get to relax :)

Had k-court with the team (still felt weird to be the youngest on tour) and then the after party, which was totes fun. The japanese team gave me a backpack full of swag, for no reason, which was awesome, so i gave it to team members it fit and ended up with a sweet bag.

next morning was all recovery, packing, then long, inefficient bus rides back to brisbane. amelia joined indi and i because we're all doing the barrier reef overnight dive together, so we all got dinner then got our flight to cairns. so now i'm up too late finishing this, and we have our dive in the morning. holiday starts now :)

So, we revenge-beat Japan in our first elimination round 6-3, with tons of our supporters there; it was fantastic. We played well and adjusted to how they played from the first game, so it was well earned. And, as icing on the cake, PNG beat Fiji (that's 6 beating 3), so PNG plays australia in the semi and we play cook island again! This means we have a shot at 2 (because we can beat cook then lose to australia), instead of a shot at 3 (by losing to australia then fighting for 3 v 4). We're the current heroes of the USA side, so we've got some big games tomorrow :)

I also finally opened my first letter from Rosalie, which contained a bunch of USA confetti (eagles, FIT touch logos, kangaroo boxers, inspirational stuff). Thanks cutie :)

So, Coff's Harbour is not a place you can get wifi, apparently. Between my phone not being configured correctly to get internet (which indi eventually fixed, god bless her) and our hotel not having functioning wifi, and my business preventing me from finding time/places to get wifi, i've been mostly offline. When I did get a chance to get online at the local bowling club (home of australia's oldest people), i'd be frantically trying to catch up on personal and nyrc business. but now i've gotten caught up on a lot, and my phone works, so i'm in better shape.

been a crazy few days. our hotel is on the beach near a bowling club and a pub that's sponsoring many of the teams, so we always go there to eat. (the pub is weird; it's a combo family restaurant/sports bar/gambling house/kids arcade, and serves the same food as all generic restaurants here. they also don't keep tabs at the bar). after an interesting drive down (our driver is a non-native, and not an expert manual-transmission bus driver), we unloaded at our hotel and headed to a fancier hotel for our jersey presentation, where all the teams took way too long to get our official playing jerseys (but it was still really cool). we got dinner at our official pub (where they have tables assigned to us and prepared meals for us each night), then off to bed.

off to the first day of games. our tent is being hosted by a local club, the sharks, one of the best touch teams in the area. prepared breakfast and lunch, ice baths, and it's parked right next to the australians' giant tents (since they brought like 150 teams) near the main fields. so, at any given time, we're all milling about, some teams warming up, some teams eating, some teams getting back, etc.. we played papua new guinea and won 11-5, then england 5-4 (which was an upset), so we were feeling pretty good. the horrible rain started when we played australia, and they (properly) creamed us 0-17, but we still played fairly well. ice baths between games, then off to dinner and bed. we watched what we could of the other teams, but the schedule wasn't generally very agreeable to seeing too much else.

second day (thursday), the torrential rain continued. people are playing in pure mud, and you're basically soaked as soon as you get out there. we played well against fiji (our televised game) and cook islands, but lost to both (close games). the whole day is just a mess of trying to stay dry/warm, and get game-ready, and adjust strategies based on the terrible weather.

showed up early for our game against japan friday, but the whole day was cancelled due to weather and lightning. so we had a bit of an indoor session at a local netball court, then long lunches and down time to actually get shit done on the internet, which is when i primarily caught up (and indi fixed my phone!). got to watch some rugby, and the team went 9-pin bowling, where we ran into the chinese touch team and challenged them, which we won handily (suckers).

saturday (today) had our morning game against japan in pure sludge (though at least we had a field -- many of them were completely flooded). narrowly lost, but we get to rematch this evening.

trying to figure out when we can go shopping, because apparently the party at the end is a fun dress-up event, and the usa women's team already had an awesome set of costumes when they showed up for dinner friday night, so we need to catch up.

it's been fun having all the other teams around and seeing the challenges they have and getting to comiserate in the tents. our women's team (first usa women's team ever) has been doing well after a rocky start, and the other teams are all doing ok. it's an interesting feeling to feel like the best in the US, then come here and realize just being in the middle of the pack is a challenge. the joy of playing with the greats :)

This was back in Redlands, but i obviously have to share it.

lining up for the bus to coffs

omg, rice krispies are called RICE BUBBLES

team bus to coffs. every time we travel anywhere, we number off 1-16 (according to our field numbers)

australia looks like this sometimes

sometimes it looks like this

the drive down to coffs. kind of Mediterranean feel, i suppose

green cokes?!

burger kinds are called "hungry jacks" because a dude who owned a mom-and-pop called burger king refused to sell the name

pit stop on teh way to coffs. Targets here are called "Target.". PERIOD.

australia apparently makes a game out of each town having a giant statue of something. this town has a shrimp.

road-side pitstop near some kangaroos.

people looking at kangaroos

hard to see, but the Coffs Harbour Giant Bananna is there, hiding behind luke's head.

after we get to our hotel, we go to the nearby bowling club to get lunch and internet and gaze at really, really old people

lunch here is always steak, chicken parm, or pasta.

we divided ourselves into blue, red, and white teams, based on bandanas. was supposed to be used to divide responsibilities and for a photo scavenger hunt, but we haven't had the time to do any of that.

on our way to a warmup session the night before

walk-through the night before, at some warmup fields. you can tell the tournament hasn't started, because we're not swimming yet.

first downpour, from our hotel room, the night before. we went into the hottub during it

jersey ceremony. really gives you an impression of importance.

mixed team presentation. tristen's the coach from FIT.

me getting my jersey. included this because i look huge.

looking hulk style.

getting my photo with our player-coach, jarred (his third world cup)

messed up photo

this guy tracey disappeared for a few days, then showed up here again.

first day! the entrance behind the NZ tent.

some of the main fields

tent USA (and Chile, with whom we're friends, i think because they come to our nationals a lot)

our tent, in action. you know, as much as a tent can be. this is clearly before the torrential downpour turned it into a barely functioning refuge.