Advertisement
Published: November 29th 2008
Edit Blog Post
holler!
welcome to the blog chris! good to hear from ya. so i have had some fun in the last few days. Lara and i, with some newly made aussie friends went to Fitzroy island...which is a sort of beautiful luxary island off the coast of Cairns. We went snorkeling around the reef and saw lots of colorful exotic fish and coral. Then we hiked up to the summit of the island a dandy 360 view of surrounding islands. to finish off the day we relaxed on Nudey beach. Yes, this was a nude beach. no i didnt strip down. by the time we got there, most people were chilled out and no longer nude. apparently that sort of things happens earlier in the day. anywho, it truely was a tropical paradise.
The next day was a more official day. I have been trying to finagle free stuff and doing further planning for diving. I found out that quite a few people actually fail the Diving medical exam here. They have some sort of lung volume tester that many of the more fit people here failed. So, i went to the test prepared to beat this machine. You basically just
blow into this tube..and they tell you to blow as long and as hard as you can. these are 2 very different things. so i asked the nurse which produced the best results...she wasnt sure. you get 3 go's at it. i tried several techniques. apparently they werent the right ones...as the printout said i have massive lung blockage and all sorts of badness. the nurse and i thought this to be quite wrong...so she gave me another 3 go's. this time around, i won! i played it like a trumpet with 1 massive burst. Hell yeah. so i will be diving.
Diving and diving certification however, is quite expensive. so i have followed up with 2 companies to finagle this. The first one is going to let me paint there boat for 5 days, 10 hours a day...in exchange for a 4-day dive certification. most excellent. The 2nd company will allow me to be a kitchen assistant on board a normal live-aboard dive trip with paying customers. So i will be their waiter for 3 days on a boat at sea...and between meals i can dive for free. most excellent again.
also, the platypus research guy emailed me. in
a few weeks, i will be sort of assisting him monitoring platpus on 2-3 day excursions to the middle of the wet tropics. this should be quite interesting as well.
Finally, today me and lara went white water rafting on the Tully river. this was most thrilling. it was a full day of grade 3 and 4 rapids. The tour operators where a great hoot...and we got plenty wet...nearly being launched out of the raft several times. We have a nice video showing all of this.
all in all, i have to say i am massively happy...and i wish ya'll could be here with me. If we ever collectively get rich...we should go on a world tour of fun and craziness together. then there will be no need for a messege board as we will all be together. anywho...i hope all is sane and hopeful for you all. this is B bloggin off.
-bRAD
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0574s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb