In the Navy, well not quite.

I must admit I have not been very good at writing to this blog the past few days. Partly its because I have been busy with the move, trying to do 2 jobs at work, and keeping my Etsy store going (I had 2 sales yesterday). But mainly its just because my mind has gone blank. I don't seem to be able to find anything to write about.

However, I am not one to give in to a challenge. So I started to re-read my previous blogs, and comments, to see if I could get inspired - is it bad I use myself as inspiration? I guess not been as this blog is mostly about me. (Yes I do talk to myself at times).

Well in my first post ( Song of Happiness: Joy. Song of happiness. Manly. ) Marmelade made a comment about those navy boys, and it reminded me of a night when I was in Cairns, and I said I'd write about it in a couple of days, and at this point a couple of days have already been and gone so its time.

Back in 2001, I was backpacking in Australia, I spent a fantastic week in Cairns, I saw my first crocodile, got extremely sun burnt that day. One of the girls in my room (Karen), was heading back to Sydney on the same flight that I was, our flight left at 6am, so we decided we'd pack the day before, and then head out drinking, and stay up all night, we figured this would be much easier than trying to get up early. As we were packing we decided to have a couple of bevies, it was rather hot you see, then we headed out with some folks from the hostel to one of the local bars, I think it was called The Wool Shed, but I could be wrong about that.
I did mention I was sun burnt

Needless to say we were both rather merry by the time we got there. As I was dancing away, I got talking to a very good looking Kiwi guy, it was already getting close to the end of the night, and I couldn’t find Karen. The guy and I decided to go get some food, so we left with his buddy. We picked up something to eat, and were trying to decide where to eat it. He suggested going back to his digs, I figured what the heck, so off we went.

We started heading towards the harbor, and I started to get a little worried, I was like, erm, there’s no hostels down here, where are you taking me?”, his response was, “we’re staying down here, its ok”, I was like, where. There was nothing down there but a bunch of boats, he then pointed at a huge navy ship, that’s where we’re going. I couldn’t believe it, I thought he was taking the mick. He tried to convince me he was serious, but I just wasn’t buying it, and I thought even if he was telling the truth there was no way I’d be allowed on the thing. Oh how wrong could I have been, all I had to do was show em my passport, and on I went. I ended up spending the rest of the night (at this point I think it was already about 3am), drinking rum and coke with the navy boys in the mess. I don’t even like rum, so I was just knocking it back…

It got to about 5:00 and I noticed the time, I panicked Cinderella style, picked up my stuff and started to leave, of course I had no clue how to get off the ship. The guys were asking what’s wrong, where you going, I explained I had a flight to catch, which left in one hour, I was escorted back to my hostel by 5 navy boys, it was pretty funny. When I got there Karen was still nowhere to be seen, and we had about 45 mins before our flight was due to leave, I went into my room to pick up my bag, and noticed I hadn’t even finished packing, I started throwing stuff into my bag, while trying not to wake the other girls in the room.

In the meantime Karen came back, we called a cab, and headed off to the airport in a drunken panic. We made it somehow to the airport with about 15 mins to spare, but of course there was a huge line, we made our way to the front, stinking of booze. The guy checking us in, was such a hunny. He told us to take our time, now our bags were checked, the plane couldn’t leave without us… we thought that was hilarious, so off we staggered. Karen somehow managed to fall over and twisted her ankle, so she had drunken hobble going on. We made it to the plane, and of course our seats were right at the back. I don’t think I’ve ever received so many dirty looks at one time. It was quite embarrassing, we’d held the plane up by about 15 mins, and were blatantly drunk, I am surprised they let us get on the plane. Of course, as soon as we sat down we fell asleep, the next thing I knew I’d landed back in Sydney, ready for another day of partying, before catching a flight to Perth later that day.

It was a rather odd night, and there's more to be told, but this post is already way to long withouth me adding to it.