Week off...

Oh how time flies. I had some things to post here but now that I look back, I see I didn’t so here goes.

Man’s version – We had a pretty severe hail storm, I just came home from a week away, had my last physio the day I left for the trip, and plans for Africa are coming along.

Woman’s version – hang on, how can I, a man, give a woman’s version? Since there’s no woman holding that significant part in my life right now, I’ll give it a try. – I was talking with a friend of mine who has a friend who was like really scared the other day. Apparently someone looked out the window and saw the wind speeding up and rain starting. It was only a few minutes before the wind was falling sideways and something really noisy was on the roof of the house. So it turns out that what was on the roof of the house was some really big pieces of ice. It looked a lot like hail. Actually, it was hail, and lots of it. It was coming down really hard and fast. It was so scary!!! I heard from someone that she had taken the rest of her family away from the window because it could break. In only a few minutes the ground was completely covered with hail. You know Penne, well, she was so lucky! She had just bought a new car and was driving it home when the hail came. She had a long drive to pick up the car and if she had come home one hour earlier, her new car would have been all dented up from the hail. Oh, I was so embarrassed! I was telling a friend of mine about the storm and she responded to my email with a comment about the “hair storm”. How could I make that mistake – to call it a hair storm instead of a hail storm. It was so embarrassing! It was so much worse than a bad hair day!!!. So I took some pictures during the storm and need to put at least one up here. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I still have a long way to go before a thousand words so maybe this picture isn’t going to be worth as much. Anyway, The storm was pretty bad. There were many cars and homes damaged by it. Trees were uprooted and power lines were taken down. Quite a few roads were closed because trees had fallen across them. Some people were without power for a day and one man died when part of a building collapsed on him. Church was emptier that evening (it happened on a Sunday afternoon) because a lot of people couldn’t make it out of their communities.

On to my week off; not much to say except that it was really good to get away by myself for a few days. I took a lot of time to process things running through my head, spent quite a lot of time on the beaches close to where I was staying, and generally relaxed. On my way out to the place I was staying, I stopped for physio and was happy to hear them say I don’t need to come back; and that everything from here on is up to me

I had a little scare with my plans for Africa when I heard about a dangerous virus outbreak in one country I’m planning to go to. It’s a really serious virus. Thankfully, it’s quite a long distance from where I plan to be; and thankfully for the lives of many people, they say it has been contained. If it was running through the places I plan to go, I’d have to change my plans but it’s far enough away that I shouldn’t need to worry. I also saw a weather report for another area I plan to go to and immediately wondered why I’d want to spend time there right now because their temperature was running almost 15 degrees warmer than where I’m at right now. Warm is nice. Hot can even be enjoyable. But when it gets to the point of walking into a sauna to cool off, it’s a bit extreme. I still have some Canadian blood left in me.

Well, I think that’s about it for now cause it’s past midnight and I’m sure I’ve already lost half of you reading this because it’s so long – but then again, if you’re reading this, either I haven’t lost you, or you’re one of the people who reads the beginning and end and tries to fill in the middle section from that. Hey, don’t laugh; between that and watching the movie, this strategy worked great for me in English classes through high school and into university. Not that I would recommend it or anything but… I’ll leave you with just a couple of pictures to highlight my last couple of weeks.

Ha, as I was looking through my pictures deciding which ones to put up, I saw some from a couple weeks ago when I went bowling with connect group. Ten pin bowling can be quite a challenge with a bad knee less than two months after surgery. Only one of the people (besides myself) seemed genuinely happy for me to win. Maybe their egos took a hit loosing to someone they’ve been calling cripple, gimpy, tripod, hoppy, and a myriad of other names.


This was my backyard midway through the hail portion of the storm. I actually say this was the first time I've seen a storm in Australia that compares to the regular summer storms on the Canadian Prairies. One other storm came close but I wasn't in the middle of it.






Here's one of the beaches I was within walking distance of last week. This was the busier section. I had to be really careful going in the water because of safety concerns with so few people around in case of trouble. I also found out that there was a shark attack on this beach one of the days I was there. Missed it by a couple hours (whew). Other life forms I saw included pelicans, blue bottles (very much like a jellyfish and cause much pain if you get stung) a sting ray (was small and dead and washed up on shore) and a few dolphins. Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of good photos, but had a good time.