Bucket List: Australia

I figure that since I have the opportunity of living in Australia for 8 months, I need to make the most of my stay and experience as much of the country as possible. My first priority for being here is soccer but our schedule leaves us some flexibility to experience other things as well. I hope to take advantage of this and decided it would be a good idea to make a bucket list for my time in Australia to make sure that I am making the most of the opportunity. In the list that follows there is a mix of adventures I would like to go on also includes goals that I have for the team and myself in our upcoming season.

1. Snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef

2. Skydive (on the sunshine coast, landing on a beach)

3. Travel to Sydney

4. Watch 1 sunrise and 1 sunset per week

5. See a Koala bear and Kangaroo in the wild, not just a zoo

6. Surf

7. Win the Brisbane Premier League

8. See at least 3 different waterfalls (1/3 done)

9. Do the Tamborine Rainforest Skywalk

10. Hike on Mt. Nebo

11. Win the Grand Finale

12. Have at least 1 A-league tryout

13. See the Brisbane Botanic Gardens (complete)

14. Work on a winery

15. Take a water taxi down the Brisbane river

I hope to complete all of these in my time down here. (although the trip to Sydney may prove difficult)

Moving on from what I hope to accomplish to what I have done in the past week….

I went on a day trip up to Mt. Coot-tha, which is 4 km west of Brisbane and visited the Brisbane Botanic Gardens and viewed the city from a few of the lookouts on the mountain. I took a bunch of pictures during this trip so I’ll shoot them out to my parents for them to distribute for those of you who can’t see them on my Facebook. The gardens were very cool. They were split up into the different types of climates they have in Australia so you could see all of the vegetation that can be found in Australia. The rainforest section was my favorite because I have never seen rainforest in person. After walking around in the gardens for a few hours I made my way up to the top of the mountain and took in the city from the lookout. It was a great view and the pictures I took can’t do it justice. Although I enjoyed that trip I was a little bit disappointed by the hiking on some of the trails I tried. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but I am planning on taking a trip out to Mt. Nebo (12 km Northwest of the city) on Sunday, which is supposed to provide better hiking and should yield even more great pictures.

The other adventure I went on this week was a trip south down the coast to the Gold Coast. Drew’s girlfriend organized a group of about 10 people who work at the cinema to make a trip to a national park there and see some glow-worms in a cave. This was a very unique experience. Getting to the cave was an adventure in itself. I don’t feel like explaining all of the details but setting out on this journey without an exact address and having the leader only vaguely remember what the parking lot looks like from her childhood is not the best way to find a cave on a mountain at 10 PM. However, it turned out really well because by the time we got there all of the other tourists were leaving and we had the place to ourselves. I had no idea what to expect once we arrived and I couldn’t take any pictures during the hike but I’ll try to explain the scene.

You start the short hike from the parking lot with nothing but torches to help you find your way through the pitch-black rainforest. I wish they were real torches but in Australia that’s what they call a flashlight. So you start making the hike down the path and you can hear a waterfall thundering in the darkness but you can’t see it until a few more minutes down the trail. After finally catching a glimpse of the waterfall you make your way down the side to a cave that is under the waterfall. After you get into the cave, and you turn off the flashlights you can see all these blue specks on the walls and ceiling of the cave. (Imagine those little glow in the dark stars you can put on your ceiling in your room, except blue not yellow). I was completely awestruck by the setting, being in the cave under a waterfall with the glow-worms all around. Not something we get to do in Chicago very often.

I’m glad I was able to make both of these trips and hope to have many more of them soon.

We have our last exhibition game on Saturday, I’m planning to make a trek to Mt. Nebo Sunday, I’ll have a room mate Monday morning (another American who I train with, Pat McMahon), and we start the season up next Saturday! Can’t even explain how excited I am to get the season started and pull the squad together, with our last few pieces arriving (Pat and Steffen Vroom) and a few other starters coming back from injury. We have high expectations for the season after beating Rochedale in the Silver Boot final when we were missing about 5 key players and they had their full squad available to them.

The new site for our league is up and you can catch all the news and highlights right all from here.

http://thewashingline.footballbrisbane.com.au/

Left Minded

After spending a few days living in my coach’s house I have moved into what will be my permanent residence in a close suburb of Brisbane. Moving into the house by myself has required me confront a fear of mine quicker than I had anticipated. Driving in the LEFT lane.

Without so much as a crash course to prepare myself I had to drive from my coach’s house into Brisbane to stay with my buddy Drew, who then brought me out to my house in Capalaba after spending a night with him. I swore that driving in the left lane would be difficult to get used to, and I’m not saying that it isn’t weird, but it is much more difficult to drive into oncoming traffic than one might think.

Really it isn’t so much the actual act of driving in the left lane that is difficult. The trick is using your turn signal, operating your windshield wipers, and shifting into gear all with the opposite hand that is hard to grasp at first. Thank god my car is automatic so I didn’t have to learn to shift with my left hand as opposed to my right. After a few days of driving I think that I have finally gotten used to driving in the wrong lane. However, walking on their sidewalks is a completely different story. It took me almost the entire week I have been here before I realized that their malls and sidewalks are no busier than Chicago, but I was completely ignorant that Australians also walk on the left. They stay to the left in everything they do; driving, walking, biking. Even their escalators are on the left side. It was mind boggling when I first realized it.

Anyways, I’ll move away from my mundane observations about the nuances of their culture and move onto some football. We played in the Silver Boot final on Sunday against one of our rivals Rochedale. To give some background on our games, they are one of the traditional powers and ran away with our league last year, but over the past three years Wolves has not lost to them in 12 games, beating them in 10. Needless to say they don’t like us very much. We won the game 3-2, scoring with 4 minutes left in the second overtime period. There were also 3 (2 for them 1 for us) red cards in the game and 2 pk’s (1 each). (This is a pre season match let me remind you, so very feisty) I was fortunate enough to be baptized into this rivalry by falling victim to their final red card offense. If you go to Paulytv.com.au the game highlights should be the first video available. Just ignore the amount of times I try to hand Rochedale a goal.

I am trying to work on getting some good pictures to show everyone but I'm running into 2 problems. First, I can't upload any of the pictures I have taken for the blog because the internet I am using is too slow. Second, it has been too cloudy to take really good pictures, even though I went out to the ocean this morning for sunrise the pictures didn't turn out. I'll keep trying and hopefully have both of these problems fixed soon.

First Days Down Under

G’day mates!

Been down in Brisbane for a few days now so I thought I would let everybody know how the first few days are going.

My flight got in on Monday morning at about 7 AM Brisbane time after a full 24 hours of traveling. The flights weren’t too bad, except on the flight from LA to Brisbane only one side of my earphones would work while watching movies. That was annoying! My coach picked me up from the airport and we went back the house he rents on an island just off mainland Australia. The island and his house are gorgeous, it’s like being on spring break, but for 8 months and with a little bit of soccer thrown in. The first day here all I did was sit outside and read and was able to get a little jog and swim in their pool. I was surprised at how good I felt while jogging, other than sweating after about 2 minutes from the heat.

However, that all changed on my second day... I woke up and was feeling a little bit woozy but didn’t think much of it. I got up and ate breakfast but I kept feeling dizzy so I decided to try to go back to sleep and see if it went away with some more rest. No luck. I couldn’t fall asleep and my stomach was starting to bother me. I ended up reading for a couple of hours, although I couldn’t roll onto my left side because my vision would go out of focus and I would get dizzy. I took some airborne, but that only made me throw up. (To put in perspective how awful I felt, I haven’t thrown up in over 10 years. Serious) So I ended up spending the entire day in bed, on my right side, and finished one of my books by reading about 600 pages of it that day. What made this even more frustrating was that we had a preseason game and my coach wanted to give me some playing time to get my lungs opened up. Nothing like being called a pathetic Yank on your second day!

I woke up Wednesday morning and felt 100% better. I was really happy about that because we had another preseason game that night. I spent the morning reading outside and sitting in the pool. In the afternoon I went and hung out with one of my buddies that plays on the team here, Drew Jeskey. We hung out by his apartment close to the city of Brisbane. He lives by their biggest mall called Chermside so we went and checked that out and met up with his girlfriend at the movie theatre she works at. They are trying to get me a job over there because it is an easy job and all the people who work there are around our age and cool people. After hanging out for a while we headed to our preseason game. The game didn’t end up kicking off until about 9:30 which was frustrating because I was so excited to play. I ended up going the full 90 minutes and felt pretty good until about the 80^th minute when my legs started to fade. I played well and fit in with all of the lads, who were all really laid back. We won our game 2-1 and advanced to the final of the tournament where we will play Rochedale, one of our rivals and the team that won the league last year.

The weather has been great. Around 75 all 3 days and slightly overcast, a break from the 90 degree weather they had been having before I got here. Australia looks just like Florida. But,I can’t wait to be able to get out and see all their unique things Australia has to offer. However, now that the Bulls game I have been watching is finishing up I need to get out to the pool and spend some time working on my tan!

First Day in Australia

Welcome to my blog!

I decided to publish this blog after numerous requests from people as an easy way to keep track of my adventures while I am Down Under. So I hope that I will be able to keep everyone up to date with what is going on with my soccer career and my experiences in Australia. I intend to post a new blog at least every other week depending on how busy I am or how exciting my travels are.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for those who have helped me along my way as a soccer player and person. My parents and sisters have always been supportive of my dream to play professional soccer and I know that I am fortunate to have a family like mine. In my soccer career I have had the opportunity to compete with and against many great athletes and I know that each and every one of them has a hand in where I am today, and my coaches have pushed me to become a better soccer player every training session. So to everyone, my family, friends, teammates, coaches, and everyone else, Thank you! Every person has left their mark on me and helped bring me to where I am today.

And on to Australia....

As most everyone knew February 2nd was to be the day that I began my never ending journey to Brisbane. However, mother nature decided that day was also a good time for a blizzard in Chicago and a cyclone just north of Brisbane. Touche Big Guy! So my travels have been delayed until February 5th (which is definitely a good thing considering I had about 1,800 errands to run on the 2nd to be ready to leave for 8 months). I was completely devastated that I wasn't going to be leaving on the 2nd as planned and in my frustration I wanted the earliest possible flight out, not realizing I had an easy excuse to stay home for the Super Bowl and not travel until the 7th. Idiot! But what's done is done, I was able to run all of my errands and get a few extra training sessions in the last couple days. With any luck I'll be watching the super bowl online out by my coaches pool in 85 degree weather! I really hope that happens.

From this experience I have learned a few things about myself:

1) I am an eternal procrastinator and leave everything for the last minute, because thats when I'm at my best, or so I think.

2) I shouldn't make decisions when I'm frustrated. But most importantly.....

3) Never ever, under any circumstances, travel to any place remotely tropical with me and expect good weather or to get there as planned. This trip is exhibit A and my spring break trip to Hawaii in 2006 is exhibit B. A tornado in Hawaii, really "Clouds" come on.

Anyways, I have put the Wolves team website at the bottom of the page and another blog that will probably have quicker information on the league that I play in. Robert Mays, if you even consider calling out my grammatical errors on this thing we won't be friends.