hnpcc | strange weekend.

The weekend ended up being fairly strange, all round.

Friday Dean and I were due to fly to Sydney, me to compete again in the Urban Max and then for both of us to wander around a bit. Dean woke up on Friday with a sore throat and stuffed head, which developed to the point that he decided to stay home. So I flew up to Sydney by myself, arriving at my hotel at 11pm. I rang my sister (who I was competing with) arranged where and when to meet for the race the following morning and crashed.

Up bright and early on Saturday morning. We'd decided to go in this race a while ago. We realised on the Monday evening that there was no way in hell we'd be able to actually win, not with me having torn a muscle, but decided that we could walk it instead and take buses. As a plan, it was a good one - apart from me not having been to Sydney since 1998 and Leonie having only slightly more idea of the geography and public transport (she lives in Canberra.) We met at Kings Cross station at 7.30am, and headed across to the start line.

This was in Darling Harbour, in a building next to the Imax. Everyone started off wandering down to the nearest coffee shop after checking in, until we all crammed (and I do mean crammed - the Sydney race was much bigger than the Melbourne one, and the building was MUCH too small for 700 people. A very ordinary start/finish choice I have to say) into the building for the briefing. 10 minutes later, we headed back outside into drizzle so that they could start the race - and the clue sheet was up on the bridge that crosses Darling Harbour with the monorail. 700 people headed off, with varying degrees of rapidity - by this point it was teeming down rain and they were handing out extra plastic pockets as the clue sheets were disintegrating quickly. We grabbed our sheet near the back of the pack, and headed across to QVB and a cafe out of the rain to try and work out the route. After an initial moment of panic ("I don't know any of these!") and a suggestion to just follow people from me (Leonie: "No! We'll just get lost!") we rang Marcus in Melbourne and asked him to start googling while we highlighted the map and had coffee.

One hour later, with a partial route worked out, we headed to Wynyard Park, next to Wynyard Station, where we put up a tent very quickly and put it down again even more quickly. The tent thing was funny, because we had to pull it out of a bag... and I noticed that the printed assembly instructions were actually in the bag. We got it up faster than most of the teams that arrived before us. From there to Observatory Hill, near the Rocks - here we had to draw the solar system and label the planets in the right order. Yeah, that wasn't actually that difficult, even with me having to check whether Saturn or Jupiter came first (it's always that moment of doubting yourself that gets you). Then we had to find the "pissoir on the hill", which was the oldest cast iron urinal left in Sydney (classy!) If you google "pissoir on the hill" it says that it's next to the Observatory - this was actually wrong, it's on George St under the start of the bridge. After walking along the western side of the Observatory where google said it was, we asked a friendly male bus driver who not only knew the exact location but had on occasion used those facilities!

From there we walked to Circular Quay where I was sure we'd find a Big Issue salesman. Nup. But we did find a bus to take us two blocks to our next destination, which was to find "Trim", the constant companion of the man who named Australia and first circumnavigated it. I have to admit both Leonie and I thought "Mathew Flinders was gay?!?" at this point, but no, it turns out that "Trim" was a cat and has a statue outside the NSW State Library. Next stop was "The Spoils of War" and "The Spoils of Peace" statues, which were "guarding our works of art" outside the NSW Art Gallery. Despite going to the wrong spoils statue first (I could have sworn that laurel leaf was a sword! Damn hat dripping water into my glasses!) we found that quite quickly and headed off to our next location.

For this location they'd given us a photo of the Opera House in front of the bridge, and said "go to where this was taken." It was obviously taken from Mrs Macquarie's chair, but the photo was somewhat misleading as it showed a clear view across the Harbour with sunshine. It poured our entire walk out there and the view was obscured to say the least! Heh.

Around this time Joe phoned us to tell us about the Darlinghurst Coke sign, where he'd seen lots of people congregating. Guessing that this must be half of the Big Issue clue, we decided to walk there (more walking, although we did pass Russel Crowe's penthouse apartment en route...) and after doing a bit of searching around finally found the clippers about a foot above our heads on the traffic lights. Still no Big Issue seller though. We asked a couple of teams, who were similarly lost, and finally found a team who was willing to tell us where the other half of that clue was - the fountain in Kings Cross - just as the train to Edgecliff arrived and we had to go. "Oh well, we'll come back:" we thought. Hm.

We were going to Edgecliff because "Paddington bear wants to play a relaxing game of bowls." Suspecting that this was the Fitzroy clue all over again, we headed across to Paddington Bowls club - walking - only to find on arrival that the club officials were refusing to let us (all the competitors in fact) on to the greens to bowl! (Wrong shoes.) So we got that clipped and decided to head across to the next checkpoint which was due to shut up shop at 1pm. By this stage it was about 12.30pm.

This particular clue had been given as both a latitude/longitude GoogleMap reference, which no one - well not Marcus, Joe and Melanie at least - could actually get to work. Fortunately they'd also mentioned "Federation Way" which turned out to be in Moore Park. We walked down a road hoping to get a bus, but there were actually no buses along this route (again, local knowledge would have helped a bit with buses. None of the maps we had - the UrbanMax crappy UBD-based one, the quite good Sydney Transit DayTripper one and the photocopied pages from the Sydways - had bus routes on them. Sheesh, would it kill them to put public transport on there?) So we walked the entire way, arriving somewhere between 1.05 (Leonie's watch) and 1pm (my watch). Fortunately they let us do this one - each team member had to scooter a half km up along a path, turn around and come back. We couldn't both do it at the same time though, so Leonie headed off and then I jumped on. We were the last team to start, but thanks to both Leonie and I going as fast as possible we actually passed another team and so finished second last!

From there we managed to actually catch a bus!!! to Taylor Square where the clue went something like:

"At the AA, the Honourable John Howard and his good friend David Hicks are making a public appearance at Taylor's Square."

This turned out to be a female volunteer in an orange jumpsuit and a male volunteer draped in the Australian flag at one of the local pubs. By the time we arrived (oh, about 1.15pm) they'd ordered lunch, which had just arrived. the team we'd caught the bus with had already done this checkpoint and told us we'd be doing star jumps and pushups... but both volunteers wanted their lunch hot so they just clipped our card and we kept on going. heh.

Our next destination was "a pool sharing a name both with a park and a major public hospitals. You will need to line up your ducks." Yep, it was Fitzroy Pool redux, only this time named the Prince Alfred Pool (near Central station - we managed to catch another bus!) and the bastards had set up the ducks in a roped off pond in the middle of the pool so there were none near the edge. Fortunately I'd brought bathers, so I changed, jumped in, swam over and found our duck in about 5 minutes. One team actually paid another team to get their duck... heh. Naturally I realised once I got out that I hadn't actually brought a towel - my t-shirt was already damp so I used it instead.

By this point it was 2pm and so we started checking how many checkpoints we had left and whether we had the time to do them. On this basis we decided to skip one checkpoint entirely (it turned out to be salsa dancing on Broadway) and go for the last one, which was at the National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour - across from where we'd started. We thought we'd be able to get there, do the checkpoint with no problems and finish before three pm.

We thought without buses. Again, local knowledge would have been very useful. We headed down the most direct street, not realising that it was yet another one way bloody street, so all the buses were heading in the wrong direction for us! D'oh! The ability to run would also have helped immensely (we were overtaken by several running teams at this point, all of whom were obviously Racing and trying to finish the last two checkpoints). By the time we got to Darling Harbour it was 2.30pm, and we realised that we probably couldn't get to the museum (it was on the far side of the harbour) and finish in time - so we headed back and came in at about 2.46pm, with 11 and a half checkpoints completed (we needed 10.)

And again the organisation at this end was... patchy. The caterers had pretty much run out of food - there were three white bread rolls with weightwatchers cheese and a slice of tomato - oh and you could add WW mayonnaise - and they'd run out of the vouchers for the bar ("you can buy drinks".) So we decided, um, no, and headed back to the cafe where we'd started to get a drink. We definitely weren't the last team to finish either. Our official finish time was 5 hours 48 minutes and 38 seconds and we came 40/45 Female Social teams, 146/152 social teams.

Next year we're running. And finding a bloody bus map!

But we had a lot of fun (particularly on the scooters) and quite a bit of luck (two activity checkpoints with no activity!) and we passed every single bloody polling booth in Wentworth, I swear. Many, many Kevin07 t-shirts, many, many Turnbull t-shirts. Some Greens.

And then we went to see Keating:The Musical[1] in the evening, which had a completely non-partisan audience (heh) and which was showing the election results before the show and during interval. The audience were going off, especially every time the results from Bennelong were shown. And now I have "I remember Kirribilli" on the brain, which is not helping.

After the show the theatre very sensibly didn't keep showing the election results (the audience would never have left) so we retired to a very pro-Labor pub across the street and kept watching from there. Watched Costello look like a weight had been lifted off him[2], watched Howard's speech, Rudd's speech, the results keep rolling in - after the nervousness of the first half hour in particular[3], the group we were with were much happier the longer the evening went on. At midnight we all moved to another pub, whereupon I bailed and went home to sleep (was very, very tired.)

Sunday we met up again for brunch and election dissection. Had Maxine won Bennelong? Who'd won McMillan? What did the pictures look like? Had Caroline Overington really punched the Labor candidate in the face?[4]

In the afternoon we headed first to an art gallery to an exhibition, then half of us to the beach, while the other half went to the Jewish Museum. I went to the museum, then caught the train to the airport and then home where a much less sick looking Dean picked me up.

Meanwhile. After the race had finished and we were sitting outside debating where to go and get something to eat, my phone went off. It was my Mum, who we'd originally arranged to bid on a house we were interested in. This was about an hour after the auction. "So how'd it go?" "Well.. you've bought the house."

Holy crap.

I seriously was not expecting this to happen.

Like seriously not. I'd pretty much convinced myself that we wouldn't get this one - it was too good, there'd be far too many interested people, the market is insane.

So, um, yeah, we've bought a house. Tonight we're foofing around with more paperwork, finalising the mortgage, sale documents etc. We move in January.

Which means I have to clean and pack our entire house before then. Oh. My. God.

24th November ended up being a fairly momentous day for me all up.

[1] Paul Keating was prime minister (ALP) of Australia from 1991 to 1996, when he lost to John Howard (Lib). Who was in the process of losing to Kevin Rudd (ALP) that night.
[2] It was really notable that he just looked relaxed. Kind of like a man who'd never have to work with someone he detested again, probably.
[3] I fail to understand people who get upset when 0.5% of the vote is counted. 0.5% is bugger all, it's probably not indicative of anything really. I refused to pay attention until after 8pm, when a half-decent number of votes had come through from Vic and NSW.
[4] Depends on whose version you believe. According to the candidate, yes. According to her, she "pushed him away". Possibly with a closed hand.