Flying Kites with ze Germans and ze Kiwis

Last Saturday after a few beers Vern took Jeremy and I to the park to show us his kite. Vern is quite the skilled kite flyer, while Jeremy and I struggled to keep the beast in the air.

Here I am dodging the kite strings, while Rover strives to catch them.

After a few hours of fighting uncoordination and tipsiness Jeremy and I were able to keep the kite flying. A roaming dog had different ideas and amused himself greatly by trying to bring the kite down!

Success to the little guy!

The not-so-obvious dangers of running

I found this sign on the east side of Mt Ainslie.

On average I have run through here once a week and have done for the last 7 years. I wonder for how long 'unexploded ordnance' has been a potential threat (besides the constant threat of boxing kangaroos). I think they have struggled to find all of the still-live ammunition as the closure to this area of the nature reserve has been extended until the end of Jan 2012.

Natural Australian

I was watching the third day of the third test against India today. Unfortunately I missed Kumar's wicket. Why? I was busy putting tomato sauce on my meat pie!

New Years Toga Party at Coogee

Is there any other combination of words that describes awesomeness better than that title? It pretty much sums up my New Years.

Pictured : Awesomeness

On the 28th December I was at a Amanda and Goof's place pondering what to do for New Years (the Ainslie football club was looking pretty certain for a while) when Amanda suggested I join them in a trip to Coogee beach to party with Alison Campbell in a toga (you may remember her from the sheep races).

Alison and her house mate Dan

Pinko joined us to turn our trio into a quartet and inspired the next greatest idea - to turn our small group into a ninja turtles tribute.

Pinko, Amanda, Goof and me proudly representing the 1980s childhood TV

We arrived at Alison's on New Years just in time to help make punch and fill up the beer bin. The beer bin was an inspired idea by Alison's roomie, Dan.

Genius on wheels!

We carted all of this to a park by the beach (it was a 3 minute walk) and then set up toga volleyball, toga cricket, and toga badminton. Oh yes, toga sports - somehow they day just got better.

We were soon joined by other like minded Roman wannabes Natalie, tall bloke, Geoff, and Geoff's missus. Pinko, who was visiting a friend also turned up. He found us by walking through the many parks on Coogee beach while helpful people gave him directions - "the other toga people are over there!" I guess we had grown in notoriety.

Apparently we stood out.

The BBQs were fired up and Pinko, Goofy, and I decided it was high time we tucked into my massive bottle of Duvel, a farewell present from the Fenner sports and arts committee.

That beer is bigger than I am

The Bondi fireworks followed dinner and then we packed up to continue the party at Alison's.

Goof and Amanda watching the fire works.

Once back we talked, we danced, we limboed (I only limboed on my way to the beer fridge), and we had water fights.

Natalie, in her stylish fitted sheet toga.

At around midnight we wandered to another park (next door to Alison's) and watched the Sydney New Years fireworks.

This is Geoff - he appeared out of nowhere. He also wins the best toga prize.

At some stage we slept.

Dan and Alison prepared brekkie for us the next morning. We visited the beach, I visited a pub and then...we punched on again!

Punching on!