A 3 Hour Tour

So I made it to Sydney. The only hiccup left in the trip was trying to connect with my Uber without any cell phone service. Fortunately, there was free wi-fi in the airport, but that connectivity cut out once you ventured outside the terminal. I called the car from inside, but of course the uber "express pickup" location was a good 4-5 minute walk from the terminal exit. As I got to the pickup location, I looked desperately for the car that was supposed to pick me up, trying to spot it amongst the dozens of cars there to pick others up from their flights.

"Are you Dan Donnelly?" some guy stepped in front of me to ask. My Uber driver had actually gotten out of the car to track me down once he realized I had an American number and might not get his texts. Wow, we're not in Kansas anymore. Well actually, they might do that in Kansas.  But certainly not back in DC.

He gave me a nice ride to the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, whilst sprinkling in some interesting facts about the area as we drove through. I was struck by how much the architecture and general vibe reminded me of Coral Gables, Florida. We eventually made it to North Bondi, where I met my boy Tyler, his girlfriend Bella, and my travel companion Mike.

After heartfelt greetings and a quick tour of the flat, we bathing-suited up and headed straight to the beach for a dip. The only word that came to mind when we arrived was WOW. What a place. A beautiful beach, with beautiful weather, stocked with beautiful Sheilas. We dove into the surf which was, somewhat surprisingly, quite chilly. I assumed such a tropical locale would have nice warm water. But the Pacific is just generally cold, it seems. We did some body surfing, where I nearly lost my Ray Bans as the surf overtook me. Fortunately, the water is so clear that I was able to snag them back before they disappeared forever. Good luck trying to do the same thing anywhere on the Atlantic seaboard. Those sunnys would be gone the minute they left my face.

After our quick dip, we dried off and headed back to the flat. We had a big day ahead of us still. Tonight was the Boaty Party. Tyler, per usual, was in charge of virtually everything. He was maintaining the guest list, which needed to be strictly enforced due to the 90-person limit on the boat that was chartered. He also was in charge of supplying the salad, the sausages, some beer, the ice, decorations, and champagne.

Decorations had already been procured before I arrived. Same with acquiring 90 wristbands, which were intended for access-control purposes. On our way back from Bondi, we stopped at the "Wooly," (Woolworth's, for those who don't arbitrarily abrev everything) to pick up the food. To accompany the sausages, we picked up a few loaves of bread. I assumed this was a cost-cutting method, as buying sufficient buns to accompany the 125 sausages we were buying would be fairly expensive. I would later learn that this is in fact the preferred way that Aussies eat their meat at a "sausage sizzle."

We got back to the flat to gather the rest of the supplies and get dressed. Tyler and I both donned our captains hats that we had each independently decided to wear because look at us, look at us, we are the captains now. We called an Uber and did a double-check that we had all of the supplies ready by the door. Once he arrived, we filled our hands but still each needed a trip or two to get everything into the trunk, which was already nearly full. I was starting to feel bad for our driver already. We all piled into the car, and Tyler informed our driver that we needed to make a few quick stops before we got to the wharf, our final destination. First stop: The quicky shop for some ice. This stop was relatively fast, Mike and I hopped out to help carry the ice bags while Bella stayed in the car.

Next stop: The bottle-o, for a case of champagne and some beer. We all hopped out, Mike and I for the same pack-mule purposes and Bella to advise on the champagne purchase. Tyler picked out some local brews for us (News flash: Fosters is neither Australian for beer nor particularly well-regarded by Australians). Bella and Tyler then went to go figure out which was the best bubbly for our budget. Just then, a thought occurred to me: We were kind of taking an excessively long time with this stop, and our Uber driver had his trunk full of all our party supplies with nobody left in the car to keep him from just leaving us.

I ran outside and, lo and behold, homey was gone. oh, shit. I ran back inside and told the crew. Oh, shits were exchanged all around. Giving our man the benefit of the doubt, Mike ran outside to see if he had just pulled off around the corner or something to park. The guy was nowhere to be found. Tyler tried to call him while paying for the booze while deflecting calls from frantic would-be party-goers trying to get on the boat last-minute. Even for the master planner, you could see the anxiety of the situation starting to take its toll. Why nobody else involved in this party could have handled any of these tasks was never made clear.

After the first call went to voicemail, Tyler finally reached the driver right as he was pulling back around. Apparently he had gone to circle the block since he was blocking traffic where he had been waiting for us. Phew. These Uber drivers down here are a different breed. We completed our purchases and piled back into the car, beer in our laps, for the rest of the ride to Rose Bay Wharf.

Tyler running the event like Tyler does

We got to the wharf and unloaded all of our supplies into a big pile by the docks. There was already a bit of a crowd gathered. The boat was going to be about twenty minutes late, which was actually a good thing, since half the party people were running late as well. Tyler's phone kept blowing up with desperate texts imploring us not to let the boat leave without them. Once we were unloaded, Tyler went into full-on Tyler Social Chair mode. He had a list of 90 people on his phone, and was checking off names and handing out wristbands. He called over one of his friends and told him that he was in charge of security, and nobody was to get on the boat without a wristband. As people approached, Tyler introduced us and I had about 30 versions of basically the same conversation.

"You just get in this morning?"

"This afternoon. Our flights got all crazy, but now we're finally here."

"You well jet-lagged then?"

"Not feeling too bad at the moment, but I have a feeling we're going to both hit a wall and keel over at some point tonight. Hopefully just not off the side of the boat."

"Haha, well you're going to love it here."

The famous Ferry McFerryFace

And love it I did. It was an absolutely beautiful day to be out on the water. We cruised out into the harbo(u)r, really taking in Sydney the way it was meant to be seen. Tyler passed out the decorations, and a dedicated group set about hanging streamers throughout the cabin. Somebody took one of the "Happy Birthday" streamers and draped it about me like a sash, just so everybody would know I was the American birthday boy. I eventually had to ditch the sash when I went above deck and the wind loosened it to the point that my now half-sash half-tail was whipping around and slapping people in the face.

Somebody grabbed the aux cable, another couple of folks fired up the grill, and the party was on. We cruised past the opera house and under the harbo(u)r bridge. Many beers were drank, and sausages consumed. I found out I rather liked the Aussie method of bread-wrapping the sausages. A hot dog bun really isn't the ideal sausage wrapper, since the heavy curvature means that half the sausage isn't staying in the bun. The bread-wrap method (with the sausage laid across the bread diagonally corner to corner) accepts this fact, and gives you a nice little grip in the middle.

It's all about the U

Maintaining your sea legs while jet lagged and several beers in is not always easy. But I managed to stay on my feet throughout the night, which not everyone could claim. One girl decided to take a little nap amid the blaring music downstairs, and curled up on a bench with an inflatable saxophone decoration as a pillow. I realized that a boat is the one place in the world that ladies have the advantage when peeing. Trying to hit a trough while standing on a rocking boat is not easily accomplished, even while sober.

The night went on, and we got to see a spectacular sunset through the bridge and behind the skyscrapers of the CBD (Central Business District. i.e.- downtown). Eventually, the cruise wrapped up and we pulled into Darling Harbo(u)r to alight. With virtually no warning (or perhaps we just kind of missed their repeated warnings amidst our drunken revelry) we were told we had only 5 minutes at the dock and we all needed to get off the boat now. Everybody started scrambling to find their belongings, which were generally scattered about the cabin. Progress was slow.

At the two-minute mark, the crew just started screaming at us. GET OFF THE BLOODY BOAT NOW! There was a mad dash to grab anything drinkable left in the cooler, and we disembarked. Drunk, giddy, full of grilled sausages, and clutching a couple of six-packs of beer, we decided we should call it a night. All three boys passed out in the back seat of the Uber on the way back to Bondi.