4 reasons I like America

23,April, 2009 at 2:59 am (Uncategorized) (, , , )

1. Venice Beach – this is where we go slacklining – there is so much culture and cool people about. Here’s a list of the different activities that go on in one small area: skateboarding, skate dancing, bike tricks, graffiti painting, basketball, muscle building, hand ball, street performers, slacklining (that’s basically just us) and there are always people getting by on wonderful contraptions – like three wheeled bikes with boom boxes rigged up to them.

2. Diddy Reece – this is a shop that gives you a cookie and icecream sandwhich for $1.50. And when you ask for a cup of water (for free) they say ‘would you only like one?’. Brilliant.

3. Taco Bell – this is a Fast Mexican food chain which serves great food (keep in mind I am no food snob) at really really low prices. The other day I got a meal for $1.89 – and it was a fiesta of fun and flavour.

4. From my house where I live I can walk at any hour of the day to a doughnut store in the nieghbourhood and get almost anysort of doughnut I want. I think I might walk there tonight, mmmmmm.

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the barefoot burrito

20,April, 2009 at 5:26 am (Uncategorized) (, , )

Last Thursday was ‘One day without Shoes’ a day to walk around sans footwear to get a feel for and draw attention to the lives of many children who walk bare foot around the world every day. If the world were made up of 100 people 40 of them wouldn’t have shoes – true fact! So in order to make the most out of this day, Ryan and I decided to walk to work barefoot – all 10 miles of it.

We started at 6:15 when it was still whispering with darkness and marched out to the stretch of beach – how romantic indeed it would be to stroll along the sand as the sun rose. Yeah, quite wrong. The sand was so cold that it made our feet numb denying us almost all feeling – and when we could feel anything it was usually a rock or stick. After the sand we hit the bike track with its tarmac surface, which was easiest to walk along on the painted white lines. Finally we found some grass and it was beautiful – I won’t forget stepping onto it for the first time and feeling each little blade of grass adorned with a dew drop crush under my footstep – ahhh. After many different surfaces and odd looks we made it to work three and a half hours later. We would have been on time too, but we stopped at the MTV studio staff cafe and had one of the most delecious things that I have ever eaten – a breakfast buritto. Hash brown, bacon, onion, cheese and rice all wrapped up in a tortilla blanket for a very reasonable price. What a find indeed, and without going shoeless it wouldn’t have happened. Perhaps freeing your feet actually opens up new possibilities? Hmm perhaps, or perhaps I would have just found the burrito later on without having to hobble around with blisters on my feet…

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A dangerously good Friday.

11,April, 2009 at 4:48 am (Uncategorized)

So Americans don’t get Good Friday off. For an ostensibly Christian country, you would think that they would at least reap the rewards of the Christian faith! But we were actually allowed to leave two hours early from work due to Jewish passover being during the week as well. So to make use of the gift of free time with sunlight Ryan and I decided to go and scout out a cool place to do some slacklining. See someone read the TOMS blog where slacklining was mentioned and they would like to meet up with us. These people are making an extreme sports show and would like to feature us in it. Cool eh? Not too sure if it will actually happen, but the idea to scout out some cool places was quite appealing as is, so we went for it. We rode our bikes in a new direction and found an awesome place to set it up on a pier – but instead we decided to do it on some volley ball posts on the beach. Now I”ve done this once before in Newcastle and was asked to move along because the posts were bending a bit, so we asked an on patrol life saver if it’d be alright. He said go for it, so we did. It was very cool, indeed and we had a nice little crowd watching us from the pier. At one stage some teenagers on bikes yelled out to us to do some tricks, so we called them over to have a go. A couple of them did briefly, while the others got pizza. They offered us some and we all chilled out eating pizza and talking and then slacklining. Some were pretty persistant and made some alright progress even when the poles started to sag  in a little. Just as they were leaving I jumped on to have a little play and Ryan jumped on the other end. Normally this is pretty tricky but because of the extra length that we had on the rope it was actually quite easy, I walked backwards towards the end of the rope to give us more distance between us so that it would be easier. But just then, WHACK, the post behind me fell down, straight on the line, probably missing my head by 30cm or less. The force of the slackline with us both on it had broken the big wooden pole off at base level. We quickly packed up our stuff and I wrote a sorry note with my email address on the pole and we scampered off. It was quite the action packed afternoon and certainly made my Friday very good indeed.

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