Cairns and Ride Down to Airlie Beach

I caught a ride with Jane to Cairns on august 2nd. Jane dropped me off at the Bohemian Hostel. I tried to find people to "couch surf" with but had no luck. It was 20 dollars a night, which is about average, but too expensive for me to do very often. I stayed there two nights in a room with 6 bunks. There were three Swedish boys all about 19, just out of high school. Stephen, Mattian, and Ponotus. They were fun to hang out with. The fist night we hung out at the bar a the hostel. It was an outside bar, nicely lit, with not too many loud people. I ordered a rum and coke using my free drink voucher. And we hung out just talking about whatever. I sang the song "whiskey before breakfast" when one of them ordered whiskey. They enjoyed it.

The next day I didn't do much. I talked on the phone to mom in the morning for a long time, it was nice to hear from her. She called me using Skype. She gave me the news that Kimi and James had separated. I wish I could hear from Kimi how she is taking it but she is hard to get a hold of. Mom says she wont tell her much either but she seems happy. She is with a new guy named Travis, whom I don't think I have ever met. I don't think it is that healthy to get into a new relationship so soon after leaving James, but who am I to talk. I am sure she has thought about this but she must really like him. For the rest of the day I had this on my mind, wishing I could talk to Kim about it in person. She is really bad about sharing her feelings with me and as I can tell other people to. I sent her an email and then went to the grocery store.

I ate breakfast or lunch whatever you want to call it, it was afternoon. Then I went to the mall and bought a new camera. I got the same kind I had before, a Nikon 'cool pics', except the newer version. It is very small, blue, and takes great pictures. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't have a view hole, just a screen. When it is really bright outside it is hard to seen what you are taking a picture of. It was a good deal though, I got the last one, so they took off 30 dollars. I played around with my camera for most of the day, and chilled out near the pool.

That night I didn't do much, I talked to josh on face book for a couple hours. It was really fun to instant message him back and forth, I was all giddy inside, like a little middle schooler on AOL instant messaging! Before we all went to sleep that night I sang the song 'hard times come again no more', which put the boys to sleep. It was great! In the morning I had breakfast and took the necklaces to the post office to send home. It was only 10 dollars to send them by sea so I did that. Its funny thinking that they may not get to the states for up to 4 months!

I took a cab to meet up with Allen, the truck driver, to where his trucks air conditioning was getting fixed. We left around noon. We were in a new truck, which was an automatic. Allen didn't like it being Automatic because it was easier to get bored while driving. It was nice for me because it was much less bumpy so I could read. I read almost the whole trip. We stopped in Atherton Tablelands to load his truck with peanuts. It was near where I traveled around with Ben. They are really stingy with how clean the truck has to be and last time Allen stopped there they wouldn't load them. So this time he made sure it was extra clean and sprayed this kitchen cleaner all over the whole thing. We were crossing our fingers hoping they would load the peanuts because if they didn't we would have to go out of the way to load it somewhere else and it would put us behind. They loaded the truck with something like thirty tons of peanuts! Then we continued south. We ate dinner at a truck stop and had ice cream bars. I finished the book, Seduction of Silence just as we pulled into the truck stop in Townsville to sleep for the evening. This truck had two bunks so we each had a bed. I slept up top. Then Allen woke up early and drove he rest of the was to Airlie Beach while I still slept.

Neil met me at the truck at 7:30 AM and helped me carry my things to their boat. I spent the morning on their boat chatting with the Robinbsons: Neil, Deb, Claire, and Nate. Then used my strong muscles to grind the winch, belaying Neil up the mast so he could replace a light bulb. Then we went to the lagoon. It is a big swimming pool wight on the water. Neil, the kids, and I hit a ball around in the water. It reminded me of when my dad and I would try and see how many times we could hit the ball back and forth with out it dropping in our swimming pool at home. I tried with Claire, but she always hit it too hard, so we could only get up to 6. I remember dad and I would get up in the hundreds, until eventually we would have to challenge our self by doing it one handed.

After playing ball for a while I swam five laps, with my goggles on and then went on a long swim around the whole pool. There is even a bridge that goes over the lagoon, I swam under it and all around. It was nice to relax my thoughts. The lagoon looked 100 times bigger under water, it was really neat! When I got out Deb and Claire had left to go to the grocery store. Neil, Nate, and I went to the beer store and carried two cases all the way back to the boat. It is quite a walk when carrying that much weight. I carried the case on my head for most of the way!

That night we made dinner and hung out with two guys that were staying on the big green tug boat across from where we were docked. The one I was talking to most name was Trevor. He and his brother working on the big green boat. Replacing old things and building new things on the boat. Trevor asked me where I was headed after Australia. I said I was planning on going to New Zealand in December. He said they were taking the boat to New Zealand in December and Neil suggested I go with them! We didn't talk much about it stayed in the back of my head. At the end of the night we went over and checked out their boat and had some coffee. The whole inside of the boat is made curly maple. And everything in the boat is top notch quality. I was thinking Dad would really appreciate the woodwork in the boat. Maybe he would be interested in doing some installations in a boat. Just an idea. Anyways I was very tied by the end of the night and fell right to sleep.