kjp

Today was my fortnightly RDO. In the morning I went up north to the Sunshine Coast, Coloundra in particular. I first went to Dicky beach: it was closed (the conditions were too unstable), so I backtracked a bit and went to Kings beach. It's changed a bit since the last time that I was up there (in February / March 2003). There's less car parking spaces (bad) but the public toilets have been cleaned up (good - but I don't really care).

It was just after high tide that I was there. There was heaps of water pushing onto the shore. I found it took a bit of effort to get out to where the waves were breaking (due to the long distance to wade/swim, and strong breaking waves). The upside to it was that I was able to catch waves for long rides. Great fun! Several times I both got dumped and was able to ride out a few of the bigger waves.

There was a (old - white hair!) guy a bit further out who was catching (and holding for longer) bigger waves than me. He had a paddle board thing (looked kind of like a "learn-to-swim" paddle board - just smaller and differently shaped) that he was using to ride down the face of the big waves. Looked like fun. I've got to get something similar. At an engagement party I went to, two cousins (by marriage) of mine suggested something similar - flippers and paddles on my feet and hands. Apparently it's easier to pick up speed, so you can travel (and do tricks) along the face of a wave, not just ride the wave down to the beach.

I came home via Chermside, to get some air-conditioning action. To get sometime: a sun protection water shirt thingy (from the cancer shop??). I'm getting annoyed at having to put on sunburn cream: and missing bits of me. I've taken it easy for most of this afternoon (tired from this morning). I'll be going for a jog soon (with W and the dogs). Nothing planned for the evening.

Anyhow, other bits of this weekend just gone by:
Friday night I was going to go out to the city, but it was bucketing down, so didn't. I need to go out more: I'm still feeling on the lonely side of things up here. Down south I had heaps of people that I knew around. Up here it's just (shouldn't say "just" - they're all cool) work people, some of W's friends, and now some people from orienteering and go. But I don't have one or two good friends up here that I have always seemed to have throughout my growing up. This is a problem for me.

Saturday was a boring day. I was pretty tired, and spent most of it sleeping and playing go on the internet. Exciting. I was also thinking about housing for me in the short and medium term. I may be buying a flat/townhouse sometime. I went orienteering on sunday morning, in a park (and surrounding suburbs) near Chermside mall. It was good to go for a run. But I stuffed up the marking of my map and put a control on the wrong street intersection. Do'h. It cost me a fair bit of time - annoying. I'm still getting used to Queensland Orienteerings' way of doing things (marking the map after your time has started). Back in Canberra, you marked up your map before you started (or it was pre-marked). On the upside I got a free T-Shirt (Enoggeroos Orienteering). Well, not really free - you have to become a member first... In the evening I saw the Lord of the Rings - Return of the King at Chermside mall (everything seems to be there these days). What a cool movie.