Gold Coast 600.

A couple of weekends ago, I had to once again leave Jeff to his own devices and head north to the beach town of Surfer's Paradise for the Gold Coast 600 V8 Supercars Race.

Once again, it was a weekend full of fun for our customers, and maybe just a bit for us, too...check it out!

David and I with our driver, Lee (right) and his co-driver, Simon (left).

Our group at the top of the Skypoint Climb.

Just hangin off the side of the Skypoint Climb.

Our jet-boating experience.  No idea why it's in black & white.

Infiltrating an Ally - Warramunga

LT and I took a stroll down by the water several weekends ago and happened upon an Australian battleship docked at Station Pier.  The HMAS Warramunga, officially an Anzac class frigate.  I don't know what that means.

In passing, we were surprised to find the ship open to the public for walkthroughs ... and even more surprised when they let us take pictures.  This could have been the opening I needed to start a new career as a spook.  Yes I'm aware Australia is an ally, but you never know when the temperature Australia stores their onboard Beryllium at might be of the utmost importance to US government.  Turns out Wikipedia has a shocking amount of information on the specifications of the ship and the technology it's equipped with.  It was a fruitless endeavor, I'm virtually incapable of lying without cracking.  I'd fold like a cheap tent under enemy interrogation.

The HMAS Warramunga.  HMAS stands for Her Majesty's
 Australian Ship.  It's always about the queen.

Somebody had a bingle.

The entire ship is painted to blend in with the ocean, then you
put a red kangaroo with a neon light on it's highest feature.

"Top secret" Beryllium storage ... I've kept the temperature to myself.

Kudos to the captain, seems to have made a smooth approach to the pier.

The Captain's chair with cup holder.

They must have suspected an impostor, you would have heard
about them on the news if they took the course I plotted.

You call that a gun?

LT nearly took a bath taking this picture.

NSM A Sight for Sore Eyes

With Laura away for another weekend race event, I decided to check out the National Sports Museum. Housed in the Melbourne Cricket Ground (the MCG  ... or "the G"), it holds the relics and recognizes the legends of Australia's sporting past.  Coming highly recommended by all the travel guides, it contains an impressive collection of memorabilia.  Fortunately for you, pictures are not permissible.  Lets just say the entire history of Australian sport crammed into an underground section of of even Australia's largest stadium tends to look like a scrap-booker gone bonkers.  This is what it looks like ...

From Coolfunpics.com

Seriously, so much stuff!  Could.  Not.  Focus.  I retained zero information and my eyes went batty.  If I could portray a visual of the AFL Hall of Fame room for you.   Close your eyes (while reading this) and put yourself in a 15 ft. x 15 ft. room with probably a 25 ft. ceiling.  There is one door into this room.  Now picture all four walls completely canvassed in 8in. wide by 1ft. tall tiles of varying grey-scale at varying depths.  Those lucky enough to be inducted into the AFL HOF have their image and career details on a tile.  These dedicated tiles make up a small percentage of those in the room and are scattered randomly.  I challenge anyone to spend more than 10 minutes in that room and not end up in a padded cell.  I attempted to regain sanity taking in Shane Warne's (the "Michael Jordan of cricket") hologram recap his career.  Holograms are not easy on the eyes either.

On the plus side, the NSM has an awesome simulation area.  It's probably supposed to be geared towards kids, but I spent a solid hour and a half there honing my Australian sport skills.  I replicated Gary Ablett Jr.'s 45m goal on "pro" mode first kick, then subsequently missed every other attempt.  I can't handball to save my life.  I can hit the stumps (in cricket) with the best of them.  I was never an accomplished shooter in basketball, and was predictably worse without the backboard as is scenario in netball.  And, like any other human with even an ounce of athleticism, I can beat a goaltender with ease on penalty kicks.

The G

Growing the cricket pitches outside the G

Melbourne hosted the Olympics in 1956.  Such a sporting city
and gaining notoriety from being "most livable city" 3 years
running, I wouldn't be surprised to see them back here in our lifetime.

I think this picture of the museum is legal.

Statue of Shane Warne

Commemorating the first game of Australian Rules Football played on these grounds.

Movember Update.

Jeffie sure is a sport.  He's working at continuing to grow out his mo, and puts up with me taking pictures of him every other day - in the name of the blog...what a guy!

Here they are...enjoy!

Movember 1st 

Movember 3rd

Movember 5th

Movember 8th 

Movember 11th

A Herd of Elephants in Melbourne.

The Melbourne Zoo is celebrating 150 years, and as part of the celebration, they have 50 life-size models of the famous elephant calf, Mali painted by a bunch of artists on display throughout Melbourne.

I thought it would be cool to download the app and go see all of the models.  Jeff didn't think so.  We compromised and took pictures of the ones that we ran into on our trip into the CBD on Sunday.  There were lots of other people that had the same idea I did, only they actually did go on the tour of the Mali's...lots of folks looking at iPhones and printed maps and getting pictures of all 50 Mali's, but not us.  We only saw about 6...not nearly as impressive as showing you 50 different elephant calves.

Faces of Mali.

We'll try harder next time.

They are going to auction them off...maybe we'll get one - what would we do with it?

Want to know what's even worse?  Jeff has lost the pictures off of his iPhone, so now we only have a picture of ONE Mali.  Sad.  All of the Mali's can be seen before they went to auction at this link - Mali's in Melbourne.

photo credit:  Melbourne Zoo
http://www.zoo.org.au/melbourne/whats-on/mali-zoo

Movember.

Across the globe each November, guys give up their clean-shaven faces in the name of supporting Prostate Cancer and men's mental health, hence renaming the month...Movember.  They start with a clean-shaven face on Movember 1st, then for the rest of the month groom, trim, and wax their moustaches into face finery.

Last year I was proud to see all of the guys on my team at work join in the Movember movement (and quite pleased when they all shaved on 1 December!), and I'm even prouder this year that Jeffie has joined in the festivities.  

Jeffie has joined to honor BigBull.  Earlier this year, BigBull was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.  We are pleased and very relieved to report that his surgery in September was successful and he is on the road to recovery and living a long and happy life :).  In fact, he started back to work late this week.

Jeffie and BigBull at the 12 Apostles in April 2012.  BigBull is a
lifelong Mo sporter!

I'll be keeping a regular photo-history going of Jeff's mo-growing...enjoy!  Jeff has never grown any sort of facial hair, so this could be interesting...what if he becomes a lifelong mo-grower?

Movember 1st

Movember 3rd

If you would like to support the MO RETREAT MO SURRENDER  team, click on the link and you can take a gander at the boys on the team and have the option of supporting the team or just a team member.  Should you choose to donate, please know that it will be converted to Australian dollars and you may incur a conversion/transaction fee.  If you'd like me to donate for you, please let me know and I will take care of it from our Australian account.

Way to go, Jeffie!  I'm so proud of you for parting with your clean-shaven face and supporting a great cause!

Oktoberfest...Melbourne Style.

Oktoberfest came to Melbourne this past weekend, and we decided to join some friends and partake in the festivities.

We arrived at the local German club, Club Tivoli, and proceeded to claim territory and try the brews on offer.  For an extra $5, you got to keep this kickin' 1/2 litre PLASTIC mug.  The best part...it has a German boxing a kangaroo wearing leiderhosen.  What's better than that?

While the steins may not have been proper German, the people and food truly were.  We had sausages, potato cakes, and bretzels (not the best bretzel, but perfect for soaking up a bit of alcohol).

Laura introduced the crowd to the pretzel necklace, an invention pioneered at an Asheville Beer Festival we attended with our good friends the Foleys.  Nobody had ever put pretzels on a string prior to that event ... trust us, we researched it.  She also attempted to dance with one of the old German veterans manning the grill.  He gave it a go and then sternly pointed to Laura and stated "can't dance".

The carnage:

Evolution of the pretzel necklace

One of the crew "helping" out the chefs

Is that a zipper?  Cause that seems odd.