Writing, Hiking, and Hot Chips

~Today was Saturday. Hot and dry and sunny, the weatherman said yesterday. YES! Thought I. I have the weekend off! Bring on the surfing!

~Well, this morning was rainy. It started out pleasant enough – I went to the Green Garage and bought two apples and used the wireless (which we JUST found out they have, one block away), and it drizzled. I wore jeans and a jacket, I was fine. I came back, we made breakfast, and it RAINED. One of those pouring, drenching, hang around all day sorts of rains.

~Ben can tell you, I was totally cheerful about this. Damn it, thought I, I don’t like feeling grumpy. I’m going surfing come hell or high water, and I’ll get all tired and sandy and happy.

*Surfing sounded lovely. It really did. It’s just… well… that rain looked awfully cold and wet.

~Undaunted and resolute, I donned my bathing suit, picked up my surfboard, and marched out the door. I don’t know exactly how warm I’d figured a rain which had required me to wear a jacket and pants and closed shoes a moment before was going to be, but DAMN it was COLD. I got less than a block from the house when the more reasonable part of my brain asked, “Do you really want to do this now?” Oh, hell, no, was the answer. Happily, I turned back toward the nice warm and (relative) dry of inside. “How about Twisted Sister instead?” I asked. To Ben’s credit, there was no mocking.

*Twisted sister is a charming café we have been meaning to go to. It was a warm color scheme of yellows, reds, and oranges and sells some thoroughly enticing baked goods and smoothies. We decided, given the dampness of the day, that sitting with a smoothie called “Jamaican Dream” and working on our book was the perfect way to spend the afternoon. So we sat and drank our smoothie (a tasty combination of banana, mango, coconut, and pineapple) and it kept drizzling.

~Uh, it was clearly raining, not drizzling.

*Well, it was rain/drizzling. Right until it started pouring.

~Anyway, it was pretty to watch. We sat at the streetside tables ensconced by warm fun paint and delicious smells and watched the rain and wrote our story. It was pretty excellent. Eventually, Plucky’s battery died...

*NOOOOOOOOO!

~... drama queen.  And we repaired for lunch.

*Oh, that’s alright then.

~As we lunched, the sun returned, and we returned in turn to our original plan: hiking. We were seeking out the trails by Tallows beach.

*We had been told that if we followed the road up to the lighthouse, rather than taking path across the beach,  we would find some trails through the rainforest.

~Retrospectively, these rumored trails (which we never actually found) are probably hippie trails in defiance of the bush regeneration effort, but let that pass;  at the time, all we heard was ‘trail’ and ‘rainforest.’

*Quite. Anyway, while we totally failed to find the trails we were looking for, we…

~…found something way cooler!

*Oy, who’s telling this story?

~Just because I’m letting you type…

*Trouble. Anyway, we found a footpath that, within a few hundred feet, took us to  a ramp which hang gliders were launching from. It was a wooden platform that extended from the path and sloped down towards a sea of trees a very long way down. One of the local hang-gliding  companies was there with a small group of thrill seekers. One by one a guide and tourist would hitch themselves together to a glider and hurl themselves off the edge. It’s a little trippy to watch two grown men chuck themselves off a cliff. A little crazy, but totally sweet.   

~It really is a sight to behold. We stood for a while, mesmerized by a pair of fliers in the sky, two people in sacks that looked like narrow sleeping bags hanging from a nylon strap to a kite, humans with wings soaring on the breezes. The launch platform led straight out to the sea which rolled a dizzying distance below even the path under our feet, much further for the hang gliders overhead. We stood and watched and rejoiced in the flight, and realized why people would hang glide. Then we watched a guy strap himself in to a set of flimsy wings with wheels on the bottom and totter to the top of the domed ramp with two men on either side fighting against the winds trying to pick him up and pitch him off the end unready, and hearts in our throats we remembered why we’re NOT hang gliding. Eventually, through design or accident, the tottering man jumped, or fell. Either way, he dropped like a brick, and then was suddenly airborne. As he soared up onto the higher winds, a pair of enormous raptors, some kind of eagle we think, took to the air from the trees atop the rainforest and joined the fliers, making graceful arcing circles, scanning the surf and sea below for their prey. It was a sight to see.

*At length, we decided to see what lay further down the trail. It was a beautiful forest path that sloped up and down several hills, through myriads of tropical palms.

~The path was muddy and the vines and the boles of the trees were wet with the day’s rain, but the sun dappled through the palm fronds and tree leaves overhead. Wooden slats made steep stairs in the path where it curved and sloped dramatically, and the littoral rainforest extended to either side. Beyond, there were occasional glimpses of the sea and bay glittering in the hot afternoon light. In the cool of the rainforest, all was peaceful. We trekked through, seeing fronds and ferns and mushrooms, looking for swamp wallabies and thinking of dinosaurs roaming and spotting and hearing Australian birds all around. The path wound around the land mass that peaks by the lighthouse and continued to descend. Just as it began to flatten out, we came to a trail map. We’d made nearly a full circuit, and exited the forest by the parking lot over The Pass, a surf break at the end of Clark’s beach, only a few blocks from our house. We walked down to the beach and watched the sun and sea and surfers for a moment, then turned our steps toward home and dinner and more writing. Which is where we were when we were waylaid by hot chips.

*So there was this great eatery we had been meaning to go to for a while… yes, this does happen to us a lot. Anywho, this time it was the local club. Clubs are interesting in Australia. Pretty much all of the more built up communities have one. They all have a bar, a restaurant, and pokeys (what the Aussies call slot machines). Our club is no more than a block or so from our house and every time we pass by the big windows we have seen people eating fried potato wedges from big paper cones.

~We presented ourselves at the front counter, signed in, went to the café area, and described the paper cone in question. The woman behind the counter smiled and nodded, and handed us a beeper thing. We took a table, and explored the wonderful kiosk of Australian condiments. I’ve never been in a place that does condiments so well. The tomato sauce is fruity and divine. The barbeque sauce is a revelation. This club also had a mint jelly that was AMAZING, two kinds of mustard, one of which was horseradishy enough to bring tears to the eyes of the unwary, and a kind of vinegar I didn’t recognize. After an interval of time passed in which we can only assume they were making our hot chips to order, our beeper buzzed. A tray appeared at the counter, metal rungs making a stand for not one but TWO enormous paper cones of chips. We’d died and gone to potato heaven. It came with a condiment described as “sour cream.” Sour cream in the States is certainly sour, and was at some point cream. This smooth white delicious stuff had probably seen the inside of a cow earlier today, and was hardly sour, but totally cream.

*After finishing what I’m pretty sure was three or four potatoes, we went back home where one of our housemates informed us that in two minutes, Earth Awareness Hour was going to begin. Apparently it is an annual event where people all over the world turn off their power for an hour. We were just about to start cooking, but what hey, save the earth, protect the whales. These are good goals. Postponing dinner, we sat down to engage in chess by candlelight.

~Earth Awareness Hour is definitely going on my annual calendar. It was very cool to sit in darkness by candlelight in solidarity with people all over switching off their electricity. I don’t know if there are enough participants (yet) to show up on the powergrid, but it’s a gesture, and wonderful. Also, this time at chess I very nearly gave Ben a run for his money. The hour passed in the locking of mental horns, and by the time it had ticked over we were ready to turn our groceries into dinner. We started with a plan. It turned into purple goulash, but was surprisingly delicious all the same.