Jan 6

Ahhh!  So where do I start with this one.

I went to a music festival called Field Day with Gus and some of his friends.  It was awesome.  It was a smaller venue than most of the ones in the US though.  On the outside they had drug sniffing dogs which I thought was dumb.  One of the dogs sniffed out a spliff that one of my friends had.  I thought it was pretty ridiculous.  They only gave him a warning since he doesn't have any criminal records or anything.  There was no fine or anything- just a written citation warning.  No more weed though :(  It was all right for me though because I didn't really need to smoke that day.

We saw Duck Sauce right when we got there.  Now that Barbara Streisand song is always stuck in my head.  Then we saw Tame Impala.  They were really good.  I've never heard of them, but it was really good music.  I'm going to have to get their CD or something. Then we watched Peaches.  Surprisingly, they were really good too and being a lil messy helped my thoughts on the idea of them being really good.  A bunch of dancing and meeting people was done.

I was really upset with Justice.  I like them but the sound system sucked for the main stage.  I felt like I could barely hear em.  Public Enemy was playing at the same time, and I could hear them better than Justice.  Public Enemy put on a good show.  I spent most of my time watching them.  Flavvvvvvvooooooor Flaaaave was ridiculous as always.  He's still pretty legit and puts on a good show.

The next day I set up this trip at a backpackers travel agency.  I start in Sydney and go all the way up to the Gold Coast and end in Cairns.  There are a bunch of stops where I can get off and stay however long I want to and then hop on another tour bus.

So the other day I stopped in Spot-X.  It's a little small town near a nice beach.  They do a lot of surf lessons there and stuff.  They offered me a free one, so I took it.  By the way, getting really drunk and staying up until 2 AM with a wake-up call at 7 AM is not a great idea.  The teachers really didn't teach you anything that any other surfer can teach you.  The waves were pretty nice and the water was amazing.  There was no need for a wet suit.  The biggest wave was probably two feet.  It was pretty easy to get up since I had a long board.  I caught quite a few waves but had one amazing run which I haven't done in soooo long because I've only been surfing a handful of times.

After that, I hopped on the bus and headed up to Byron Bay.  I did all of my sleeping on this bus.  It took about four in a half hours to get up to Byron Bay.  I saw this graffiti art work done on an electric box of a red VW van.  I'm pretty sure it's the same one that Timarie and Danielle took a picture of when they went.  Byron Bay is so awesome but it is raining like crazy right now, so I can't really do much except pubs.  I tried walking around today, but I got drenched in rain and called it quits when all of my clothes were soggy.

Last night I went to Cheeky Monkey which is a big club for tourists.  I have met so many English people here.  It's still cool and I can finally tell the difference in accents now.  I love meeting all of these people from different countries- Dutch, French, Swiss, English, Aussie of course, and not many Americans.  I have only met one American and he's from Canada, eh.  Anyway, we got a good deal from being on the tour bus thing, and I got a ten dollar steak with fries and a salad.

All the English people think it's cool that I'm from California, so I don't have to try too hard to make a conversation.  All the Aussie's always ask me why I left California to come here.  The answer is simple; because I want to.  So I was hitting on this English girl, but the place got so packed that I lost her when she went out for a smoke and I got another beer, so I met another English girl who was actually on my tour bus.  We started talking and I yanked out the card that I can drink more and better because she's a little girl, so we had a tiny drinking competition which losers had to buy more drinks.  I got about 5 free drinks out of her and a good make out sesh until she bit my lip and it started to bleed.  I called it quits after that because she was beginning to become psycho and sloppy.  It's easy to give the slip when the club is so crowded that you can barely walk in there.

I got back to the hostel around 3 am and met more people and talked to them for about an hour until I could barely open my eye lids.  I woke up about 10 AM and still rain!

I'm leaving tomorrow to Brisbane and hopefully the weather will clear up.  It's supposed to be shit weather for another week, and the highway from Surfer's Paradise to Cairns is closed because it is flooded.  It won't be open for another 6-8 days.  I would stay longer in Byron Bay, but it is hard to get a place.  I was going to do couch surfing, but I don't want to risk not having a place to stay tomorrow night and sleeping in the rain.  Byron Bay is so packed right now because so many travelers can't go much further up north.  I tried changing reservations up north but I'm keep on getting rejected, so I have to stay on my itinerary for another week.  It's OK though because I reckon that I'll be back up here again when it's winter (summer for the states) time.  All the locals in Sydney told me that it's really beautiful in the winter because it's still warm.

All good so far.  I just wish it would stop raining :(   It's still awesome though and even though it's raining like crazy, it still can't ruin my trip.