11-13-2008

Escape from the city, lord of the flies, Kathy takes a deep breath, US rules, Apollo Bay, Slovaki in Aus, Best Western, run, bowling green.

Kathy seemed to be a little indecisive this morning to I took charge and said we would go to the great ocean road on the coast and I set the GPS for the YHA Hostel in Apollo Bay. The locals said that it was a one and a half hour trip but it wound up being about 3 at our pace. Today the GPS worked fairly well as we made our way through the streets of Melbourne on our way out.


Assaut Vehicle
We headed towards Touque on the coast which is where you pick up the coastal route. As we left that town there was a sign that read Bells Beach. If any of you remember the movie Point Break that is where Johnny confronted the leader of the surfer bank robbers for the last time. It is legendary due to the size of the swell that comes in from the Antartic. As most of the top surfing places in the world this one did not look that remarkable on this day. It is an small bay about a half mile long.

Kathy and I hiked down from the bluff above on a well constructed wooden stair, the flies were all over us - this was our first encounter with that pest. It was about 150 to the water. As we climbed out Kathy was doing fairly well. After a few minutes in the car she began sweating and coughing. We had to stop the car so that she could get out and get some nasal drops. To be honest I was worried that she was going to have a heart attack or some other life threatening event. I thought what am I going to do if she drops to the ground and stops breathing. I guess I would do CPR until she either started breathing again or died. That is not the kind of situation I want to be in. In any case she recovered and we were back on the road.

In the next settlement I saw a sign on a family restaurant that said Solovaki so we stopped for what I hoped was some healthy Greek food. We ordered and I ask what other greek food they had - the lady said what greek food. That was not a good sign - she didn't know Slovaki from fish and chips. We got the food and started to eat but Kathy slowed as some of the meat dropped out. You couldn't tell what specific animal it came from even though we ordered the chicken. I am still feeling a bit ill after about 15 hours. Finally we arrived in Apollo Bay. An attractive small town on the coast. We decided on staying at a Best Western because the room has a small kitchen where hopefully we will be able to cook some healthier food.


I didn't feel like it but I forced myself to go for an hour run. As usual at the end of the run I felt much better. The flies left me alone for most of the run.

We are on the second story of the motel which over looks the bowling club. After showering I filled a wine glass and went over to spectate. Men and women of all ages were together on teams Grandma together with Mom. It is not as physically demanding as our bowling it is about judgement and skill so age is not the huge advantage. Their kind of bowling is more like Bochi.
A final note.

I have been watching a lot of the news and I had a great conversation with a local businessman on the flight over. The US at this point in time is driving the worlds economy. Even though our economy is in recession and our dollar is not supposedly worth anything we are the only real game in town. The Australian dollar was trading close to even with the US a few months ago now it is worth .67 because apparently it is the currency of choice in the world. World business wants to trade and the bottom line is that the dollar is what they want to use. The EURO I guess is in there somewhere but the dollar is still on top. So for people who are thinking about moving their investments focus out of the US because of our percived internal decline I would say think again, I don't think it is time yet unless you are very savvy.