January 25 - Australia: Cairns
FINALLY! Running again: Jon's run #50
I've run at least 50 times while we've been away on our trip. That's not really a lot, but when you figure that we couldn't exactly run in Africa (lions and tigers and bears...oh my), and Egypt was desert hot (you try running when it's 116degrees outside!), running in India isn't exactly the smartest thing to do because one western person can attract a huge crowd faster than you can say Chicken Tikka Masala, Nepal and Tibet were too damned high (it's hard enough to catch your breath while sitting in Tibet, let alone after going for a nice run)...well, you get the picture. I've learned some of my body's limits the hard way, such as it is better to avoid the mid-day heat in Singapore or you'll be sick for the rest of the day and also that it is best not to run with what is probably strep throat.Strep throat you ask? How did I possibly get strep? One of the DMs was really sick a week or so ago and was standing right next to me as he cough-cough-coughed and sneezed his way through the morning. So I'll blame it on Masa but it's still my fault. After waking up on Wednesday with an odd lump at the base of my throat and swollen glands I knew it was time to hit the 500mg Cipro that we've been stocking up on as we have passed through countries with, shall we say, less than stringent controls on their pharmaceuticals. Let's just say that the only time I ever need to go to the doctor when we are back in NY is for the odd sore throat or ear or sinus infection. Well, no more! We have enough Cipro to last us well into the next decade.
So anyway, where was I? Oh, today I finally got to run again. You know, you never know when you're last run is going to be...when you're going to miss a few runs or more because you've pulled/strained/broken something or when you'll miss those few runs because of some illness or another. Luckily it was only a 3 or 4 days for me or I would have been climbing the walls. So since we're not working on the boat these days I was able to sleep in until the relatively late hour of 6:15am and still make it out for a run before it got too-too hot. It was great. And it looks like we'll get to run this late for a few weeks because our classwork for our instructor's course doesn't start until 10am most days!
Mo' Money! Will the Surprises Never End?
Wow. OK. So since Jon decided to write a novel about his run this morning, I'll keep my part short.
I went to DSDD to meet with AnnaMarie and to pick up the remainder of our books for the Instructor Development Course, which starts on Jan 29. We managed to borrow most of the books from friends, but there are a few things that we absolutely MUST HAVE on our own or else we're in deep poopie.
On the list of "Must Haves": 2 Instructor Manuals, 2 Instructor Candidate Workbooks, 2 Sets of Slates (Open Water, Confined, OW Planning, and Confined Planning), 1 Business of Diving, 1 Set of Exams (Open Water, Rescue, Dive Master), and a few "PADI Outlines". Doesn't seem like so much, right? So I'm not even going to mention how much it cost because it will make me sweat all over again.
Visa should be paying me a commission.
As if the cost of the books weren't bad enough, it seems that we ran into a bit of confusion. Jon and I thought that it was "recommended" that we have our own BCD and regulator (aka "kit"), but not "required". So we were counting on using the shop's gear. But it turns out that we cannot CANNOT do the course without our own kit. This is a PADI requirement, in fact. The "recommended kit" we heard about was for our time on the boat, not for the IDC. As I recovered from a mild heart-attack, AnnaMarie whispered to me about a few different options that didn't include paying full price for a kit at the shop. (Kits at the shop start at AUS $1700). So she and I pretended to look at the gear in the shop for a few minutes before she sent me on my way.
I went home to tell Jon the bad news, and we looked up a few different places in the yellow pages. Then we hit the road. Long story short: we found a place that can rent us a BCD and a regulator a for a few weeks at a decent price - a minute fraction of the price at DSDD. We also found a scuba shop that is selling off its old equipment at a price just as decent as the rental. It's hardly brand-new high-tech stuff, and the BCDs are faded from the sun. But I think we're leaning toward the second option. We'll sleep on it tonight and make a decision tomorrow.
Dinner
The house smelled like pasta sauce all day. Jon made a big pot of it with meat, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and some delicious spices. Then he let it simmer all day long, "because it's just not real pasta sauce if it doesn't simmer for hours!". Crazy Scot. He thinks he's Italian!
But it was worth the wait!