The Beep

The best part about having a blog is being able to post things that are completely irrelevant. Here's a clip about an experience we had the other morning. We felt like we were being "punk'd"...

Spiderbusters.

Sooooo we haven’t posted in a while. Not being able to easily post our videos has really put a dent in our master plan to entertain you from ‘down unda”. But, as the great Vince Vaughan reminds us: “Rule #76 ‘No excuses, play like a champion’”. Here’s an update with still photo evidence.

 

We can’t believe we’ve been here for over a month already. Time has flown by between getting drivers’ licenses, staying at the Gold Coast for 2 weeks, starting practice and exploring every mall on the coast when we have time to kill.

We’re really getting into the swing of things now… having a cockatoo in our backyard seems normal, Taylor doesn’t break a sweat when she drives anymore, and we can pick out the different coins and bills without hesitation.  The things we’ll NEVER get used to are the bugs. A massive bug in North America is considered kind of tiny here. Ahhhh

Our backyard buddy

Last week, we got back to our car (which we’ve named Zoe by the way) after practice and Cate started hyperventilating. There was a giant white spider tucked under the door handle. And by giant, we mean the size of a palm. Apparently we’re weaksauce. We didn’t know how to kill it and we weren’t sure if it would jump at us so we scared it under Zoe with a flipper. MISTAKE. We haven’t been sure if it was there or gone for the last week, but we were advised that we should have just killed it because it could hold on through Taylor’s traffic stalls and even on the motorway. *aspeldfja;oeijf!!?!?* It probably started a family under the car. We had kind of forgotten about it until yesterday. We got back to the car again after practice and the same spider was crawling on the car! Are you kidding me? We hope it wasn’t an endangered species because it’s a flat spider in a parking lot now. And Taylor’s flipper has spider guts on it.

No, this is not one of our hands, but the spider was this size...

Also, this week in our first aid class we were informed that 11 of the worlds 12 deadliest snakes live in the bushes around where we live. YAYYYyyy!

We took Bronze Medallion, First Aid and CPR this week so we can hopefully start working as lifeguards and earning beautiful Australian currency. (Which is about to surpass USD…it’s a big deal here but unfortunate for our exchange rate)

The Commonwealth Games were a huge deal too. Australia dominated the medal count. If you want to read about a real comeback story, read about Geoff Huegill, an Aussie swimmer. Pretty awesome: 

http://geoffhuegill.com/about

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Some sad news hit hard to the Synchro world recently. Last week Cate’s dear friend, Meghan Kinney, got diagnosed with cancer. She has been training on the USA National Team as the duet with Cate’s other great friend, Michelle Theriault, to pursue their dream of going to the 2012 Olympics in London. Meghan is a very strong person but with this new battle up ahead, we ask send that you send her the strength and energy to fight this off.

We love you Meghan, and we are always thinking about you! :)

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We’ll work on posting older videos that we had planned soon! Thanks for keeping up with us!!

Honk if you love Canadians!

Video for the previous post, courtesy of Cate's sister (who has a faster internet connection).

It takes two...to drive

Day 1: Terrifying. Lots of screaming, stalling and drifting to the right side of the road.

Day 2: Still pretty much a disaster. Severe clenching when any other cars were around us.

Day 3: We got our official Queensland licenses in less than 30 minutes. Too soon?

Day 5: The chance of using our insurance decreased by 50% (this matters because we got healthcare on day 5)

Right after we ran over a couch cushion on the motorway...

A week later, we're walking, swimming, and dreaming on the left. Cate is mainly behind the wheel still because Taylor has a lot of hours to put in before Australia can rest easy. Taylor acts as the human GPS slash emergency brake releaser for steep inclines slash instant therapist for Caitlin when the tires screech (eg. "breathe...it's the pavement's fault, not yours").

We're in the process of naming our precious hunk of metal and we need suggestions. It's definitely a girl...a feisty little girl with a temper. Maybe a 3-letter name because she's compact, maybe a "cute little cafe name like Zoe or Eve" as Cate describes her. We need ideas!

They still gave us licenses

At the end of week 1 we headed south to the kids' grandparents' beach house because they get 2 weeks off school between semesters. Our official practices have started and we're being whipped back into shape at a rapid rate. It feels good to be practicing regularly again and the pool we train at is the bomb.com. Warm water, outdoors, right next to a harbor and lots of nationally ranked athletes by our side for motivation :)

In our next post we'll show you some of the fun activities we were up to before our first practices...

TTFN

*We have a video to accompany this post but we're having technical difficulties trying to upload it :S

One-way tickets

Our first video is a look at our journey down here once we met up in Los Angeles. Equipped with bright yellow team backpacks, Australia flip-flops and plug adapters, we made the epic journey from Toronto/L.A. to Brisbane. We missed out entirely on September 10, 2010 crossing the dateline. The LAX-->SYD flight was 14 hours but very entertaining thanks to V Australia and their massive personal entertainment systems and full course meals. We had to sprint to catch our flight from Sydney to Brisbane thanks to Taylor's bags coming off the belt last to clear customs. Cate got inspected for declaring Starburst and Teddy Grams, and Taylor got sniffed for drugs by a cute little beagle, which kept us laughing through the rush.

To follow up on the compression sock experiment, Taylor’s ankles ended up normal size, but we can’t say the same for her feet.

We’re excited to see how strong the right side of our brains are as we take on the left side of the road. Watch out Australia! …no seriously.

Continental Drift

Hi Everyone!

At the beginning of September we packed up our lives in North America (into only 2 suitcases!) and headed to the land down under with big hopes. We didn’t come to Australia for a typical post-college getaway…we’re in this for the long haul. We’ve been fortunate enough to get a go ahead to compete with Australia in our sport of synchronized swimming. Both of us have always wanted to live in Australia, and with the help of our family & friends our dream has come true (pardon the cliché).

For those of you who know us well, you know that we rarely encounter dull moments. Hopefully you find our antics as entertaining as we do. :)