January 17
Record Books 1, unexpectedness 1, pure random 50, coincidence 1 in 500,000
A couple of days ago Chris and I listened to a radio program about chances and it involved a girl writing her name on a balloon, and how that balloon was found by a girl with the exact same name 120 miles away. What were the odds of that.... well....... 1 in a very long shot. Now in order for me to properly explain what I have just experienced, I am going to have to leave the realm of everyday experience and enter into the realm of the.......unexpected. I was sitting on the couch after supper, alone as my traveling companion had already called it a night and packed it in, when a knock on the door pulled me out of my little reality, and into the realm of the totally unexpected. A 49 year old woman entered and so my roller coaster ride started. She told me she had a confession to make, she said that this morning she was behind the shop and saw a car parked out back and thought it was Adam's car. It is my car I said, that car out back is Adam's, because my name is Adam. Really, she said, "Your name is Adam to, that is so cool." Anyway, she said she saw my car out there and thought it was her friend's car (also named Adam). She saw my camera sitting on the seat, and then she paused in her story, and my imagination took off. Did she pull some kind of practical joke, what did she do I didn't lock the car last night? The camera was still there, did she delete some pictures, take some inappropriate ones? My imagination was flying to terrifying heights, and then she said she took some pictures of herself. My imagination cleared the upper atmosphere as it was joined by a companion called fear as the thought that there may be a picture of a naked women on my camera. But luckily it came crashing back to earth rather quickly as she read my mind and told me that she was wearing all her clothes when she took the pictures. Apparently she took some pictures of her feet, and then realised it wasn't her friends car or camera, and took some of the sunrise. She was coming to apologise for using my camera, and going into my car. I laughed and said that was fine, and according to the camera, it did look like a really beautiful sunrise. Well she left and I continued to ponder what just happened, when the second wave crashed into shore, or should I say the cat came back. She sat down and asked me to listen to a letter she had written for this other guy named Adam, yes the same Adam who she thought originally owned my car. The funny part was that the letter talked about Photos (Ironic, yes), sunrises (coincidence) and the idea of traveling (hmmmm). Anyway she wanted my opinion on the letter as she was leaving in a couple of days, and she wanted to read it to him, but he already left for the day. She thanked me for listening to her letter and we chatted for a few minutes before she went to bed, but not before she burnt the letter. I have to admit, it was a strange evening , and well worth recording. Well goodnight, I need to be up early tomorrow.
January 24
Well the last couple of days have been rather interesting as we have been working on a vineyard. For 2 days we pulled weeds, for the next 3 we split the grape vines, and then for another 4 we thinned leaves, a really tedious job actually. Anyway that has been the boring part of our time here let me get to the good part. Due to the extreme heat on our first day of work (+40) we worked in the early morning and later in the evening. When we returned to the hostel we were immediately invited over by Scott and Die for some wine and leftover homemade pizza. There I met the Adam I mentioned earlier, and discovered that for 2 years he lived just outside of Drayton Valley, which is kind of weird since he is actually Swiss, but still Drayton Valley and a guy named Adam, kind of cool. Anyway I also ran into the camera loving sister of Scott who I mentioned in my last blog, again. Then there was the Greek Pizza maker named Spiro, and what a pizza to, top quality, delicious, a much needed and much loved unexpected gourmet dinner. The last person we met that night was someone Chris recognized. It was the guy who worked at the tourist info center in Mt. Barker and sent us over to Scott and Die's. But here is the interesting part, it turns out that we were the last people he helped as, it turns out that was the day he quit that job, and he had only heard about this work on the vineyard a couple of hours before we had arrived. I think that is so cool. Anyway continuing along we have mostly been working and relaxing in the evenings as we are tired from working in the warm weather. But we took yesterday off and I went over to a locals place where I joined in and played Beach Volleyball for the first time. I have to admit that I like that sport, the ability to just dive for the ball into a bed of soft sand instead of the hardwood floors I am used to has it's advantages. Anyway I think my favorite play of the game is when I did a 1 fisted dive from the back row into the sand, hitting it an inch off the sand and somehow managed to aim it over the net and into the middle of all of the opposition was rather impressive. My second save of the night came when communications brokedown between my partner in front and me in the back, by the time I realized it was my ball I was forced to do a 2 legged frog jump and was able to just catch it before it hit the ground. The thing was I hit it with so much force the sound made my playing partner Ange flinch and duck, even though the ball was now where near her. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was surprised that I got that, as the other team didn't react until much to late. After the game we sat down and had wood fired pizza, and some beer. I met some really nice people there and had a really good time, even though it took me like 20 minutes in the shower to get the sand out of my hair, and even longer to get it out of my shorts. Non sports highlight of the night was when I was talking to a girl named Ange, our conversation went like so:
Ange "So what part of Canada are you from?"
Me "Edmonton, Calgary area"
Ange "You're from Red Deer aren't you?"
And I spilled my drink in shock. It turns out she lived in Banff for 2 years for a working/skiing holiday, and drove to Edmonton to see the mall. She said that she remembers driving through Red Dear, and filling up in Gasoline Alley. Small world, most definitely. I finished the night playing a game of Australian Trivial Pursuit. I was on a team of 1 Brit, 1 Sweed and 2 Australians vs 4 Australians that as it turns out went to university and studied Literature, Engineering, Physical education, and then lastly someone who I would later believe to have a mental IQ level that would equal my brother. My team only rolled once, and they never got a question wrong.
On another sporting note, I watched a game between University of Adelaide and Bendigo in women's basketball. With 2 seconds left, Bendigo down by 1, Bendigo hits a 3 pointer at the buzzer. The girl who did that did it one other time, in the semi finals, when she played for Canada, I was really proud.
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