Week 7: Mike vs. Spontaneous Road Trips

Classes. They happened.

For Thursday, Liam, Matt, Tim, and I had booked a trip with a couple of girls we had met through our classes, Amy and Marissa. We had planned to go snorkeling with a company that actually had the permits to get up close and personal with migrating whales, essentially letting us swim with them. To get to the dock though, we had to rent a car. On Wednesday afternoon, we all got an email saying that, due to rough seas, our whale excursion was unfortunately cancelled. When we got over the disappointment of not being able to swim with whales, we realized that we still had the car rental to pick up in an hour. Now we have a bunch of college kids, a rental car, and no plans. You guessed it… road trip.

So with only a few hours before sunset, we pretty much googled “beaches”, clicked on the first link and put the address in the GPS. We had nowhere to stay, nowhere to be, and only a general idea of where to go. In the span of an hour, my night had gone from a quiet evening in, to an adventure that would make for one hell of a college essay.

Our “plans” in place (I use the term plans in the loosest sense possible), I gathered together some clothes, a sweatshirt, a blanket, and a pillow for our absurdly spontaneous night. At about 8:30PM, Liam, Tim, Marissa, Amy, and I (Matt had a test the next day L) loaded into our 2000 Nissan Pulsar and began driving North towards our destination, Noosa National Park. We were driving for about 20 minutes before we realized the E-break was on. We were off to a great start.

With no place to sleep and a car the size of a toaster, we decided that we were going all in and sleeping on the beach (a personal bucket list item for me). We were kinda sure that you’re not supposed to do this, so instead of the main (and likely patrolled) Noosa Beach, we aimed for the stretch of sand right next door: Sunrise Beach. The sun rise from Sunrise Beach. It was too poetic to pass up.

And so we drove on in our rickety car we named Laqueefah through Surfer’s Paradise, past Brisbane, and upward to the Sunshine Coast. After about 2 ½ hours, we reached the quaint town of Noosa and the revered beaches that line the coast. We spun around for a few minutes until we found a parking lot along Sunrise Beach. At this point it was around 11PM so the town was dead quiet on a Wednesday night. Not even feeling remotely sleepy, our motley crew gathered up our pillows and blankets and walked toward the inky blank waters of the Pacific. The beach was beautiful, even at night. It didn’t take long for our eyes to adjust to the darkness and we searched for a suitable spot to set up camp. After only a short walk we found a perfect little patch of sand nestled into the hills lining the beach. It was void of light pollution, hard to spot from any nosy late night beachgoers, protected from the wind, and elevated enough so that we wouldn’t get surprised by wet toes at high tide.

The campsite

Happy as clams, we laid out our towels, snuggled up in our blankets and looked up at the unsullied night sky. If you’ve read my blog about the outback, you’ll already know that I have a special affinity for looking up at the stars. The only problem with the outback was that we went during the super moon, which in itself was actually awesome, but at about midnight each night, the moon would rise and it would be so full and bright that it would dim the stars quite a bit. On this beach, on this night, it was different. There was no moon. With no moon, no man made light, and no clouds, the night sky was in a state I didn’t think was even possible. I had thought the outback was the pinnacle of my stargazing. I was dead wrong. With my naked eye, I saw the entire Milky Way galaxy stretching from horizon to horizon. The view from Sunrise Beach looked like the type of long-exposure picture that someone would keep as their desktop background. Meteorites blazed across the night sky every few seconds and at least a dozen satellites drifted silently amongst the stars. It was outright spectacular.

As for sleeping on the beach, it was surprisingly comfortable. While it got rather chilly as the night went on, I had dressed appropriately and the dull roar of the ocean waves just a few feet away lulled me to sleep pretty quickly. At around 3 am I woke up to shift around a bit in the sand when I spotted that the famed Southern Cross had risen from behind us and shone impressively in front of the Milky Way. In the midst of me wishing that I had a camera that could properly capture the sight, the largest shooting star I have ever seen streaked across the sky, flew right in front of the Southern Cross, then exploded into 7 separate pieces that continued to fall down to Earth. It was doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope (to say the least).

I knocked out again and awoke at 4:45 to the growing light of the sun on the horizon. We were rather surprised to see that there were already 6 or 7 surfers wading into the water for some early morning rollers. While we stood at the ocean’s edge still bundled up in our blankets from last night, a pair of surfers walked past, pointed, and said in the most Australian way possible, “Oi! That whale is going nuts!” We looked to the ocean and sure enough, there was the whale, breaching out of the water, having a grand ol’ time. He breached five more times, an incredible spectacle in the growing morning light.

You can see the whale on the horizon line

We watched the sun rise out of the water, just as it has done for billions of years and I decided to try something I had heard about years ago in middle school. A few seconds after I saw the first rays of the sun over the water, I quickly squatted as low as I could in the sand at ocean level and the sun rose…again (This is due to the curvature of the Earth and how your point of view from different heights from sea level allows you to see a slightly different horizon line. This equation, D ≈ sqrt(2*R*h), will give you a rough estimate of your apparent horizon distance if you plug in the height of your eyes from sea level as h and the radius of the Earth as R. You likely don’t give a crap, but I think it’s cool. I’m a nerd, nothing new there). ANYWAYS, I technically got to see the sunrise twice in one day from Sunrise Beach, so I guess I have that going for me.

After my overtly geeky science experiment, we gathered our belongings and headed into Noosa to find some breakfast. On my way to back to LaQueefah, I walked past two surfers who were walking back to their less aptly named cars and I struck up a conversation with them. They were older gentlemen, likely in their 60s, and I chit chatted with them for a bit about why they were out so early. They casually stated that they come surfing every weekday at 4:30AM right before they go to work. HOW SICK IS THAT!? I mean honestly, they must be nearing retirement age and they go surfing every day at sunrise before work! I’m lucky to get out of bed before 11am and not break my alarm clock in a sleepy rage. Mad props to those guys.

Noosa was an enchanting little beach town with a visibly tight knit local community. The main beach was actually voted the third best beach in the South Pacific, and for good reason. We found an outdoor café with a really friendly owner and got breakfast there. With no plans for the rest of the day, we asked the café owner what we should do in Noosa. On the spot, he whipped out a map of the area and told us to do a scenic hike around the national park. Heeding his advice we began our walk around the park and scenic it indeed was. The coastline was craggy with the basalt of some long dead volcano and huge cliffs towered over the ocean at the northern tip of the park, a place appropriately named “Hell’s Gates.” We took gratuitous amounts of touristy pictures along the way. Would you expect anything less?

On the eastern coast of Noosa National Park, a large stretch of sand called Alexandria Beach provided us with a nice resting point to cool off with a swim. You know what really sucks? Tan lines. You put in all of that effort to get that golden brown shade and you still have some certain areas of your body that remain pasty white due to those pesky things we call “clothes.” Apparently some past Alexandria Beach frequenters recognized this pressing issue and decided to combat it by shedding a few layers to let the sun finish what it started. Sooooo yeah, Alexandria was a nude beach. I guess that’s another thing off the bucket list? On this day, there were only a handful of people partaking in this particularly primordial practice (oh damn Mike, that alliteration), so we were able to distance ourselves from the leathery skinned 70 year olds who enjoyed feeling the breeze-between-the-knees. Trust me, nobody wants to see that.

After our adequately clothed swim, we continued along the beach whereupon Liam spotted some rocks with some large waves thundering against them. Well, Liam decided it would be a splendid idea to get a Little Mermaid-esque picture of himself with a massive wave crashing behind him. What he failed to realize though, is that the wave actually continues to crash over the rocks, even after the picture was taken. So he died.

Nah, I’m kidding, he just got pushed over and scraped the bottoms of his feet. The picture did come out frickin awesome though. Worth it? Probably.

You gotta admit, it's pretty cool

Liam was full of good ideas that day because he also decided to do the hike with bare feet. Another 3 miles to walk, some nasty cuts on his feet, and no shoes made for a less than ideal situation. Amy was recovering from an Achilles injury and the hike was the longest she had taken since getting her boot off, so Tim and I split off, grabbed the car, and picked Amy, Liam, and Marissa up at the other end of the trail so they didn’t have to walk much more.

So we left Noosa in the rearview and despite being tired, sandy, and a little wounded; we had a phenomenal time. Our impromptu adventure was amazing and was one of my best stories for this entire semester. Worth it? Definitely.

We got back to campus midday Thursday and despite our exciting past 24 hours, Liam and I still had a full weekend ahead of us. We, along with a bunch of other study abroad kids, decided to take advantage of the high Australian minimum wage (in comparison to the US) and make some moolah! The V8 Supercar Race was in town and where there are fast cars, there’s rich people. And where there’s rich people, there’s places for the rich people to show off how rich they are. And where there’s places for the rich people to show off how rich they are, there’s lots and lots of food. That food needs to be brought to said rich people and that’s where broke foreign kids come in!

So I got up early Friday, donned my straight black wardrobe which I bought for a solid $30 from K-Mart (Including shoes) and hopped on the bus to Surfer’s Paradise. I was assigned to the corporate boxes all weekend long so I got to service all of the top tier suites situated right above the pits. Each box was all inclusive so the food and booze flowed endlessly. This meant A LOT of work for me and my equally black clad comrades. Friday was a long day of running up and down stairs with massive trays of gourmet food, but being a fan of motorsports meant that the powerful scream of the V8 engines whizzing past made it a little bit better. The fact that I was getting paid $27 an hour helped too. We also ate a ton of the leftover food from the corporate boxes. There were entire trays that were left untouched that we all devoured.

Behind Pit Lane

Saturday was a very similar game plan. I woke up early, got to the track by 9am and immediately started running food. After a 9 hour workday the day prior in my $5 K-Mart shoes, my feet were not exactly in the best of shape. But hey, the pay had risen to $29 an hour. Around midday, my supervisor had me and a few others grab some carts and replenish the alcohol for the Moet suite. Moet is a pretty pricey champagne, about $60 AUD per bottle, and we were tasked with transporting 25 cases of the stuff through the dense race crowd and up to the Moet suite. So $9000 worth of champagne being carried by 4 dudes dressed all in black with earpieces and walkie talkies must have been quite the spectacle. As we worked our way through the crowd, people actually started taking pictures of us. We must have looked like the secret service transporting the President’s personal liquor cabinet or something. If anyone spots me on Instagram wheeling around champagne let me know, I want the photo cred.

After the final race had finished and we had cleared out all of the boxes, the supervisor asked if I wanted some overtime work. I jumped at the opportunity of course, and I ended up helping to restock the beer for the entire track. Between the 8 of us that stayed late, we moved 20 pallets of Coopers pale ale which totals out to about 57,600 cans of beer. That’s a lot of beer. I paired up with this really funny guy from West Africa, and we got to use these cool souped up golf carts to help transport the cases. So naturally we whizzed around the track between each run. I ended up working until 10:00PM and though I was tired, sore, and sweaty, it was actually a lot of fun ripping around the track after dark (My African buddy and I may or may not have had a few minor incidents where our need for speed was too overwhelming and we ended up losing a few cases over the side of the cart).

Sunday was the same deal as the past two but my feet and my K-Mart shoes were having some relationship troubles and they weren’t on very good terms. Nevertheless I powered through the day, worked another 8.5 hours, said goodbye to my fellow food runners, and limped my way out of the track for the last time. Because I was already in Surfer’s I met the squad at Waxy’s and stuffed my face with as much $3 steak as I could humanely eat. After such a grueling weekend, I passed out the moment I got back on campus. What a freakin week.