...a horse collapsed underneath me...

...twice.

To be fair though, it was a small and malnourished horse.

We were in Mongolia at the end of a particularly harsh and devastating winter, felt all around Europe and northern Asia. Whereas in England there might be a blizzard bringing two inches of snow, or delayed flights that slightly inconvenience travellers, Mongolian farmers had lost a ridiculous amount of livestock. There were piles of dead goats by the highway (a slightly paved road) and you could buy a pelt for about a dollar.

After a long week spent in the gritty capital of Ulaanbataar, we signed up for a van tour which Bob our friendly hostelier operated. We had been hanging around the Golden Gobi Hostel waiting for more people to arrive, who we hoped would be keen for a week long trip around the countryside. A Dutch couple arrived, and we talked them into the adventure and left the next day.

Zaya cooking up a feast in the
'kitchen' of a yurt

Our guide, Zaya, and our driver, Bayer (I think...) were awesome. Zaya was a Gobi girl, from a Nomadic family in the Gobi Desert in the south of Mongolia. She spoke perfect English and had a great sense of humour, asking us to tell her some jokes even before we were out of the city. And she was a very impressive cook, whipping up fresh food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with the most primitive cooking appliances available in the middle of bloody nowhere, with no running water, on a gas cooker, often with kids or kids (baby goats - see what I did there) running around her ankles.


Bayer was a driver and a half - a big fellow with a bowl haircut and meaty hands who we're pretty sure represented Mongolia in some winter Olympics at some stage. He had limited English but loved trying to talk with us and tell jokes, pose for photos and have a bit of a rough and tumble at cliff edges. Our van was basically a Soviet tank on wheels, shaped like a pig but with the suspension of a billy cart. The roads through Mongolia were barely existent, especially now before Spring, when a good part of the country was still under ice and snow. Bayer handled the van with extreme skill, often stopping in the middle of a snow field with no landmarks visible in the snow storm, having a bit of a think, then driving off in the - always right - direction we needed. He would zip through fields of snow, ice, creeks and holes without slowing down, flinging us out of our seats, over each other or straight into the roof.

Our tank on wheels

On one day of our trip - and I'm gutted I don't have a photo of this - we were driving through a complete white-out. I don't know what Bayer was navigating with - there certainly weren't any hazard lights because there wasn't actually a road. We came across two men who were herding their goats around with their little shitty car (lazy) which had become stuck in a snow drift. The flock were getting away and, like us, couldn't see a thing so were basically stumbling blindly in the white. We stopped and Bayer hooked up a tow rope and got their car out of the drift, but it couldn't go. So leaving the flock and hoping they'd hang around together, the two men jumped in the van with us to get a lift to the next village. And they brought a goat in as well. A very cold goat who was scared shitless, whose eyelashes were frozen (so were the shepherds) and who found it very hard to get comfy in the back of a van with six human people. The two men were bundled up in traditional outfits - a long trench coat-style felt coat with bright sashes around the waist. They looked so cold and miserable; I wanted to get a photo but didn't want to embarrass or offend them. We dropped them off at what I thought was the middle of nowhere but must have been near somewhere.

We stayed for seven nights with various families around the region. These families were mainly semi-nomadic, in that they will set up camp for winter in a sheltered place, then maybe head 50 kilometres away to their summer camp in more pasture land. Their camps consisted of a couple of yurts - round tents made out of layers upon layers of felt, with a lattice structure to hold it up, a small door with a particularly hard top, and an intricate arrangement of furniture around the yurt, usually a couple of single beds, a kitchen corner with everything neatly arranged, a dressing table with all their personal effects and a kind of shrine, with photos and religious stuff and pretty little knick-knacks. In the middle of the yurt was a little fire place which burned either wood or shit, with the chimney going up and through a hole in the ceiling, often chimney-sized, often just a little bit too big so as wind and snow could sneak in.

Our first yurt camp - at Karakorum, the site of the
oldest Buddhist monastery in Mongolia

The families who we stayed with were set up for tourists, with an extra yurt free of all the clutter of a home, usually with four or six beds arranged around the outside and a plentiful supply of fire wood or horse shit. The fire, and I guess this is an international characteristic, had the potential to go out at the most uncomfortable hours of the night. It could be sweltering in there when we hit the hay (literally), but as soon as the fire went out it quickly became apparent that yes, it was in fact -25 degrees outside. Usually the mum or dad of the family would pop in during the night and re-stoke the fire, but if they (understandably) just stayed in their warm beds, it would be a war of attrition as to which of us tourists would do the job. I have been known to prefer to put on a pair of ski pants rather than take responsibility for the fire. And this is possibly the worst climate in which to have a small bladder and a large thirst. It's a tough choice between just holding it in and not getting back to sleep, or running to the hole in the ground 100 metres away in aforementioned freezing. Let's just say there's a couple of yurts out there that may have been weed on by a mystery weer in the wee hours of the morning. And that weer may have received a few weird looks from the resident yaks.

Guard Yak

As part of the selling point, these organised tours offered activities with the families, in order to partake in and appreciate the lifestyles of the nomadic people. We visited monasteries, had old folk sing to us, fed herds of scraggly cows, Bayer cooked us a genuine Mongolian hot pot, and of course, we rode around on horses. Oh, and a camel.

It seemed cruel at the time, and it seems even crueler now. I don't even like riding horses. My legs aren't built to be wrap around such a hairy chunk of flesh (zing!), and my knees are all knocked up. So why would I get on a skinny, mangy half-sized horse and expect it to not collapse under me? Phill's obviously a bit bigger than me, so sure, give him the bigger horse. But believe you me, under all these layers of thermals, my brand spanking new purple Chinese snowpants, and the traditional Mongolian overcoat that Mrs Horse Lady lent me, I'm not exactly small. I want a man-sized horse, dag nammit!

So, we saddled up and Mr Horse Man led the four of us on our total of two full-sized horses to Orkhon Waterfall, which was about a half hour horse trot away. I just googled Orkhon Waterfall, and pictures like this came up:

This, however, is what we saw (and, just quietly, is a bit more impressive, and not just because I made it extra large):

The beanie's a bit of a giveaway

So much water, and frozen! And shaped like that! It was a frozen waterfall! Crazy. Phill and I ventured down to the frozen lake with Mr Horse Man and dutifully threw rocks in to try and smash the ice.

So the horse I was on had fallen on the way to the waterfall. It was a bit shaky on the ice, it was a bit skinny after the harsh winter, and it had a big Australian girl in stupid fluffy purple jodhpurs on its back. I would have fancied a bit of a sit down as well. When we arrived back at the family camp, everything went into cartoon mode as my horse promptly collapsed under me, with its legs splayed out to the side. I felt very bad. This family had four little kids running around, helping feed the flocks and chop the wood. Then in come these big white fellas, who promptly burn all their wood, jump on their poor underfed horses and then ride them around like hooliagns until they collapse. That's not a genuine experience with a Mongolian family! They would have hated me!

Later, we rode camels.
They didn't collapse.

Where: Mongolia

When: April, 2010

...Simone was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

Some of my faves, New Years Eve at Darlo.
Was it 2005 or 2006?

It was exactly a year ago that I received a Facebook group invitation from my friend Joe, asking me to sponsor him in the MS Fun Run that was happening that weekend in Sydney. He went on to say that one of his closest friends - 'as good as family' - had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the tender age of 24. Joe is actually my oldest friend who doesn't happen to be related - there's a photo of us rolling around in a green barrel at Invergowrie play school, when we were about three years old. I'd gone through play school, pre-school, primary school and high school with Joe - then who was this closest friend who had been diagnosed with MS??? Had he found a new group of friends that he'd actually known for 20 years and considered like family??? Was he just trying to pilfer a bit of extra cash for that extravagant lifestyle he no doubt leads in Sydney??? Or was I, after 18 months overseas and 10,000 kilometres away in Whistler, just a bit out of the loop???

I was determined to find out who this person was, and went on a massive Facebook stalk. Besides some of my friends repopulating Australia single handedly, others planning weddings or precious two-week trips overseas, there was not much jumping out at me - as far as Facebook statuses can jump out. I went to Simone's page, knowing that I'd read something about a twitch in the last couple of weeks. Maybe a mention of imbalance, or exhaustion. I spoke to her on Facebook chat, starting with an emphatic 'what's going on???' Not as in 'hey, what's going on', but a furtive, panicked 'what's-going-on-who-is-this-person-that-Joe-loves-who-has-just-been-diagnosed-with-MS-and-do-I-really-need-to-donate-or-is-it-just-one-of-his-random-Sydney-friends-with-their-big-hair-and-their-fancy-high-heeled-shoes-and-their-Gucci-bags-who-think-Armidale-is-a-formidable-place-in-the-desert-where-we-ride-kangaroos-to-school-and-just-got-colour-TV-or-is-it-actually-someone-I-like???'

It was the latter. Big fan of Simone.

What came next was a hurried Internet search for any easy, layman's explanation of what MS actually is. I can guarantee there's at least six people who will read this whose first thought about MS was Mrs Hughes the Librarian, from St Mary's Primary School in Armidale. She had MS. She would zip around the library in an electric scooter called Phar Lap. Mrs Hughes ran that library single handedly, squeezing her big machine behind the counter (where she would sometimes let us scan the books ourselves!), re-shelving all the picture books and young adult novels (I just had a horrid thought - I really hope they don't have Twilight in there now) and commandeering the remote control in the video pit like a boss. Every year us kids would all take part in the MS Readathon, gaining sponsors from the family ranks and trying to beat each other in the amount of books you could read - at least that's what me, Ashlea and Kate Fitz did.

This medicinal marijuana in Amsterdam in 2005
only gave us the giggles

So when you find out that there's no cure for MS, that it affects three times as many women as men, that the average age of diagnosis is 30, and that the symptoms can vary from a loss of sense of balance, twitching, loss of sensitivity and tingling, problems in speech and fatigue - you realise that the possibility of getting a bit of medicinal marijuana is just not worth it. And to have that realisation at age 24 - it's not fair.

You know what else is super not fair? Losing your father when you are 17, and then being diagnosed with MS seven years later. Simone's dad, Ben, died suddenly of a heart attack in 2004, while away on a hunting trip in Goondiwindi. He fortuitously left three coins in his pocket - one for his wife and one each for his two sons and daughter - and Simone wears that five cent piece on a chain around her neck all the time.

The days, weeks and months that followed that unhappy time were an amazing banding together or friends, family and community to provide Simone and her family with the love and care they deserved. Our group of friends, the night Ben died, were celebrating Joe's 18th birthday at his family home - which involved a massive bonfire and the squeals of rabbits being smoked out of their barrows. Once Simone's aunty and uncle had taken her away into town to be with her mum, we huddled together to comfort each other and as news spread our parents came to collect us - with I'm sure a new found respect for the fragility of life.

We were born in the 80's.

Our group of friends - I'm just remembering this now - gave ourselves a day off school and hung around the park together, waiting to see if Simone was up for visitors. We eventually made it out to her place to join the throngs of well-wishers and help out in any way. I'll tell you this much for free - cooked chooks are worth their weight in gold, and so versatile! The Hiscox's friendship group is quite a spectacle - from old school friends of Ben's and Kay's, colleagues, so many relatives that you need to get some butchers paper to draw up a family tree, church friends, Jason and Mitch's rugby team mates, and school friends of, just quietly, three pretty cool siblings.

This same friendship group was shocked to learn about Simone's diagnosis, and we once again banded together to try and help out. Joe, as 'the absolute opposite to the picture of health' (see aforementioned extravagant Sydney lifestyle), committed to running the 2011 MS Fun Run which was eerily coincidentally the week after Simone's diagnosis. Picko, an old family friend, quickly organised a similar fund raiser in Armidale. Everyone Googled MS to find out what it is, what it does, and (at least I did this) how can we be positive and take Simone's mind off this?

Sorry Simone, but this wasn't
even the bad photo.
Note, we were at the beach,
so the no pants aspect of the photo
is a bit more acceptable

A month after all this, and with a sigh of relief that she was actually coming, I went to Vancouver airport to collect Simone and Gabi. No one knew if Simone was going to be able to fly - would she have to take stupid amounts of medication, what if she had an extreme relapse in the middle of the Canadian Rockies while fighting a bear, what is she has a slight unbalance while taking a jumping photo on a wharf and falls into the ice cold water (...almost happened), and ultimately - would she be up for it? Such a huge flight, away from home for over a month, away from your doctors and your mum and your whole support system. Luckily Gabi and I are pretty awesome, and we were enough to get her on that plane. At least that's what I think.

Simone's side-on approach to a jumping
photo is a bit more flattering

We had an awesome two weeks together. I hadn't seen Gabi or Simone for almost a year and a half, and we had alot of catching up to do - mainly gossip and speculation about who would get pregnant next (still winning!). We had a quick dash through the Rockies and I eventually learned that MS can cause exhaustion and fatigue, and to give Simone a break if she didn't want to do one more little hike, or go a little bit further.

Phill and I have loved getting visitors here in Whistler, mainly so we can be tour guides and show people how awesome our lives are and tell them stories about bears and beavers and poutine and caesars, and so Phill can explain the rules of hockey (or ice hockey as it's known in Australia) and I can show off my commute to work, or the tiny hut at the top of the hill that you can see from our balcony - that's where I make waffles! So to have this time with two of my best friends after so long apart was unbelievably cool. We used to see each other six days a week for six years, but now things were getting real and we had been living separate lives for seven years.

It's a special kind of friendship that lasts for twenty years, especially when you're only 25. That's alot of stuff to go through together - alot of ridiculous teenage angst issues, pimples and boobs and periods, first kisses, leaving school, going to uni, moving away, travelling, falling in love and getting engaged. Simone's one of those people who, it doesn't matter how long you haven't seen them for, is just going to be the same cool chick with the same loud laugh and big boobs hair and that way of tucking in her elbows when she laughs and awesome family and awesome friends who would cross an ocean - at least run eight kilometres - for her.

I know they're kidding.

This weekend is the MS Walk and Fun Run, to raise money for both research into MS, and for providing care, respite and support for those suffering from MS. Team Simo, comprising of Joe, Ciara, Kate Fitz and Sonya, has raised over $3,000 and just reading down the donations list makes me a bit homesick. So if you've got some spare cash, donate some money. If not, give Simone a hug next time you see her, or help an old lady cross the road, or put on a jumper instead of turning up the heating, or write a letter instead of an email, or swap a shift with someone who's desperate, or try some food that you've never had, or help out a lost tourist, or warn somebody about the dangers of drop bears, or go for a run, or pick someone flowers, or call you mum, or do a dance - something that's going to make this a happier and healthier place.

...we climbed a volcano...

and I cried on the way down.

Mount Rinjani is on the island of Lombok, and is the second highest volcano in Indonesia. Pay a man enough money, and he will guide you up to the top and have a friend of his carry all your stuff as well.

Indonesia was the first stop on our world trip. With no plans and no itinerary, we were able to make it up as we went along, and that saw us on the island of Lombok before long. After an eight-hour ferry journey (next time we'll get the speed boat) we arrived in a place that we didn't know...and then were told we needed to get a bus to Sengiggi. Our faith-in-human-kind filter was on high and we thought everyone was ripping us off and trying to capture us for our obviously superior organs - but in the end they just wanted to get us to Sengiggi.

Scooting around on a scooter

Sengiggi is somewhat of a ghost town. There were not many activities except for scooting around on a scooter, drinking cheap beer, watching fat people try to parasail, dodging the hustlers on the beach trying to sell you trinkets and gecko trinkets, and having the runs. Phill perfected the last activity after some dodgy ice in a refreshing Coke, and I provided much entertainment to the lady at the corner store trying to act out Phill's symptoms. Endo-Stop, for those playing at home: look for it by name.

Luckily thanks to some massive storms our guided hike was postponed a couple of days so Phill could rebuild his strength. We still started our hike in the rain, in the dark, and sweltering by sunrise. We had a guide and for the life of me I can't remember his name, and we had a Lombokian sherpa who carried a pole across his shoulders with two massive baskets holding all our camping and cooking gear. Phill and I had nothing to worry about except one foot in front of the other. For eight hours. Up.

The view from the crater rim - volcanic
ash and smoke

We went from dense farmland with little chicken sheds every now and then, through dense jungle, into denser (more dense?) jungle with monkeys, and finally to a clearing from which you could see for miles, if it wasn't cloudy. The exploding part of the volcano itself is in a lake in the crater of the greater volcano. Our camp for the night was just below the outside ridge, above the lake with views to the west and Bali (apparently). We shared camp with a lovely French couple who we overtook at one of the rest stops on the way up. Even with their minimal English and our appalling French, they managed to invite us to their home for a visit in France (although I may have asked if they would sleep with me tonight, which gives it a bit more context). Our guide (let's call him Dewi) cooked up an awesome meal for us - fried rice with fried eggs and veges, on the top of a volcano! How do you carry up eggs without breaking them?? Fair dinkum. We had a good look around the crater, got lots of photos, then went in search of the perfect place to have a shit.

Look, over there! It must be a perfect toilet spot!

It's an important camping skill, finding that perfect toilet spot. You want enough coverage to provide privacy, but not too much to block the undoubtedly awesome view that turns a toilet stop in to a 'Bliss Piss'. You need loose soil and ground coverings so as to either dig a hole, or cover up the unmentionables once the procedure is complete. A slight downward gradient affords more comfort on the haunches, but beware the risk of runoff. And toilet paper - don't forget the toilet paper. Never leave the toilet paper to someone else, for such a big responsibility is often too overwhelming for lesser skilled individuals.

So we camped the night in torrential rain, with the mangy dogs who had followed us the whole way up whimpering outside our tent, rain sneaking in every which way, the ground feeling particularly volcanic-rocky underneath us, and the I-Phone battery depleting so I couldn't read any more 'Classic Books on the I-Phone' to send me to sleep - Alice in Wonderland just didn't cut it.

Looking surprisingly chipper after a night
with no sleep.

The next morning, the storm had cleared a bit and we were able to see to the sea (not very far, really) and our next destination - the Gili Islands. We had another hearty breakfast courtesy of Dewi, and began the clamber down. I'll tell you this for free - hiking up inevitably means hiking down, and it's not as satisfying. Hiking up you've got a view to look forward to, and...well, that might be the main reason. Hiking down - you've seen it all before! The only difference is which muscle group you're using to the extreeeemmeee. I've never been in so much self-inflicted or inevitable and unaviodable pain...who would have thought that hip muscles could take such a beating? I started crying about two thirds of the way down, when everything just got a little bit emotional. I hadn't slept the night before, my muscles were seizing up so that I could only take a step down with my right (or left - irrelevant) leg and I was at that ten-days-away-from-home-and-shit-we've-got-alot-more-bloody-adventures-to-get-through stage of homesickness. I was hot, sweaty and dirty. Thank god I had found that perfect toilet spot the night before; the thought of that view got me through.

And then we made it down. Remember that time when we climbed a volcano...and I cried on the way down? I forgot it soon, because these were our next activities:

Going Tom Hanks on a coconut

 

 

Getting acquainted with the reefs off Gili T

Watching the sunrise over the afore-mentioned
Mount Rinjani

Dressing and posing like my mum

Watching the torrential rain from the
comfort of a bar which also sold
particularly cheap alcohol.

Where: Mount Rinjani, Lombok, Indonesia

When: February, 2010

...we made cakes which looked like our faces.

Phill and I just played a game of photo roulette to decide what I was going to blog about this rainy Wednesday afternoon (it's not actually that rainy, we're just lazy and tired from a bit of a stroll through the bush). And this is what we came up with:

Ahh, the Tooke.

Tooke Street was the fifth and final house I was to live in during my time in Newcastle for uni and that brief start of a potential career in television. It definitely had the most character and potential - at least that's what the real estate agent claimed. It was an old pile of bricks, falling down from the ground on up, mouldy to the point of potential lung diseases and filthy from whatever squatters squat there before us ('us' is the other two lovely cakes in the picture - Lucy and Clare).

In any university town, there's a period around the end of January every year, when the country kids come back to the city and need to find a place to live (or squat) before uni starts in February. It's a stressful time of year, especially when your other two country kids are still in the country and can't help out with searching, applying, being denied, and eventually cleaning the above mentioned Tooke once we were accepted. You start out the year with such high expectations of a brand new house, ocean views, dishwasher, and a vegetable patch - but end up with the Tooke.

Once you get past the thread-bare carpet, mouldy bathroom ceiling, cobwebs behind the doors, overgrown lawn, flaky ceiling plasters, and that old/dead/damp people smell, the Tooke isn't really that bad. You can make any house into a home with four important elements - housemates, furniture, knick-knacks, and baking.

Early morning drinking AND a Kitchen Party!
What more could you ask for?!

I know Lucy and Clare from my brief stint at International House college at the University of Newcastle. I shared a flat with Clare and Lucy lived close by, and there were many shenanigans in that semester of college life. I was not allowed back to college for the next year (very unfairly if you ask me) so after my Christmas holidays at home in Armidale, I was able to take a massive, and thus far extremely successful step and move in with Phill in a tiny flat in Newcastle's Bar Beach. That was 2008. In 2009, Phill moved home to help run the family business and I had the task of finding that elusive rental property.

The Tooke has location, location, location down pat. It was about a seven minute walk to Bar Beach, three blocks to Darby Street and two to Darby's Pies. I could walk to work at NBN in 15 minutes...or drive in two. Centennial Park and the Cooks Hill Bowlo were across the street, and Coles was an evening stroll away. And then they built an Aldi, whacko!

New Years Eve at the Tooke, 2009

In every urban street, there is a token dilapidated dwelling, and ours was it. But it didn't matter! We had friends, jobs and studies, activities galore! We lived in an awesome city! We had every type of baking pan, multiple types of tea, and a collection of beer and wine bottles lining our loungeroom wall. We held dinner parties, pot lucks, games nights, pre-drinks, Australia Day (paddling) pool parties, formal dress Christmas parties, New Years Eve parties, graduation parties. We had friends and family sleep on our futon, Dads help mow the lawn and plaster the ceiling, workmates and Barry the friendly neighbour donate furniture.

There were a couple of times that city living got to us country girls. I was woken once by a girl peeing in the garden outside my bedroom window. I was woken another time by a phone that someone had dropped in same garden. I was woken yet another time by Clare running into my room screaming that there was someone at her window. There was, and his bike was still leaning against the front fence. We called the police, I guarded the door and his bike while Clare turned on all the lights. I turned for one second to make a very witty joke to Clare, and the sneaky bugger managed to swipe his bike and ride off into the darkness. We slept on the couch that night. After my time at the Tooke had ended, there were (I think?) two break-ins, a couple of computers nicked, but everyone safe and sound in the end. Home contents insurance, for those playing at home. 

In the three years of the Tooke, there were multiple house mates coming and going. Lucy lasted the longest (and not just because of the alliteration), and every new housemate has different stories, different memories and possibly different lung diseases.

But it was a good time. Look how big our delicious smiles are!

Lucy, Clare and Kate:
Tooke Street Pioneers

Where: 47 Tooke Street, Cooks Hill, Newcastle

When: 2009

...we thought we were getting ripped off by a small Turkish boy

Saklikent Gorge is this awesome, natural maze of marble (or something else...who am I kidding) about an hour by a dodgy mini-van from Fethiye on the south-west coast of Turkey. Phill and I had a few days to kill before a three-night cruise to Olympos, and our trusty Lonely Planet suggested the Gorge as one of those time-killing activities that we get so good at while travelling.

We followed the high walkway, stapled into the stone, above the gushing river - which, lo and behold,  was actually just a creek that decided to sneak into the gorge and take all its credit. We crossed the creek, fully clothed in our modesty, and clothes, and were able to walk for kilometres through Saklikent Gorge itself.

There were some tough bits which involved shimmying up and down rocks and waterfalls, wading through waist-high puddles (at what depth is a puddle a lake?), and avoiding cavernous openings that could break your leg or eventually fossilize you.

Grace and determination: essential
components for looking this good

 

The Turkish families out for activities were very friendly and helpful with tips of how to slide down waterfalls (with no grace), how to get up waterfalls (with a bit of groping) and where in aforementioned puddle were no deathly sharp rocks (they were everywhere). But then, who wouldn't want to help out this guy:

Very exfoliating, but not enough to get
rid of the beard

As we made our way back out of the gorge, a small boy started following us, then ducked just in front of us in order to point to where we should put our feet. I started laughing, but then felt a little offended...I consider myself quite nimble, and even after gaining eight months of travelling fat, I was sure I could walk out of the gorge unaided.

He was very nimble...

Then I figured that he was being a sneaky little bugger and would demand (via hand movements) that we pay him a couple of Lira for his tour guide skills. I was having none of that. But then, distracted by a shiny butterfly or fat American or an ice cream stand, he just ran ahead of us and we lost him in the hordes of people unable to cross the icy creek.

Small Turkish boy realises he won't get a Lira outta us!

Kate and Phill: 1...small Turkish boy: 0. Sucker.

 

When: August, 2010

Where: Saklikent Gorge, Fethiye, Turkey.

I said I'd start a blog...

Do you ever have a bit of a moment, a flashback, an awesome memory that is so out of context to what you're doing right now but it managed to sneak in there anyway?

Going for a bit of a stroll and you remember that time when you got a fine for jay-walking in Kuala Lumpur and managed to bargain the fine down to whatever you had in your wallet because you left for Beijing the next day?

Or you're chopping up onions for dinner and you remember that time when an Italian mother at the hostel in Copenhagan asked how you made your spag bol, and was very impressed when you let her taste a bit?

Or you're walking to the bus in the rain and you remember that time when you thought it'd be a good idea to climb Mount Warning even though it'd been raining for three days and you had the Big Day Out to rock at the next day?

Or you're contemplating the fruit at Nester's and remember that time when your Pop would use a ridiculously large knife to slice right through a watermelon from Farmer Charlie's and you'd eat in on the grass in his backyard, all sunburned and windswept from a morning at the beach.

Yeah, memories like that.

I'm going to start to write mine down, because, just quietly, I've got some pearlers. And the number of times I hit my head - whether it be through extreme sports or clumsiness (but mostly extreme sports...) - these memories need a more permanent home.

I'll often have photos to back up my memory, and you will often find yourselves sneaking in there with cameo roles, and hopefully you'll think 'yeah, I remember that time'. And hopefully you won't think 'yeah, I remember that time. Now would you shut up about it, I'm trying to sleep'.