1st Weekies

A few months ago my lady, tina b, learned she was being called to her employer’s Melbourne office for some “we can only get this done with you here” type work. She flew down for 4 weeks, yet there was still more to do. She booked a flight down and I conspired to tag along for the five or so weeks. I packed up my mobile product development-er-ator and we jumped on the BART to catch the 18ish hour flight.

I had already loaded up the ipod, picked some good long-read mags, and scored some meds to help with the sleep. Knowing all too well how uncomfortable it is to sleep in one those airline coach seats, not to mention a flight to the other hemisphere, we resolved to buy those funny looking neck pillows. We were about as prepared as you can get, when…

Suddenly we were paged to the podium while waiting in line to board. “T. Bilger party of 2. Please approach the ticket counter prior to boarding.” We looked at each other, but didn’t dare say what we thought. The guy in charge looked at us seriously and said, “I don’t mean to inconvenience you, but…” Ugh…. Knew it! We were getting bounced. The man continued, “It’s an awkward offer. We can upgrade you to business class, but you will have to sit a couple seats apart. We need your seats in coach for a family.” Remember that scene in Willy Wonka where Charlie peeks into his chocolate bar and then looks back up at gramps? Yeah, kinda like that.

Upon taking my seat, 8D, decisions had to be made. “Champagne or Juice, Sir?” I then chose chicken off the dinner menu and at some point felt we’d crashed the party. I won’t go into further details of how you become a completely different citizen when sitting in this slightly different part of the plane. I’ll just say that we were well rested upon landing in Sydney.

Once in Sydney however, we fell asleep at the wheel a bit and missed our connector. We sat down where we thought our gate was only to get to the correct spot as the plane was pushing back. The kindly “Sheila” at the jetway briefed us on our dismal situation. We would have to wait til tomorrow for a rebooking or catch a flight on another carrier. A few stressful situations later, we found ourselves with a Qantas ticket and another 10 hours to kill. tina b happened to have a complimentary guest pass for one to the VIP lounge. A smile and wink later, we were both in the comforting arms of leather armchairs in the Qantas lounge. Such amenities included: A robot barista. A mini sammich maker. A metric toilet; so precise it has indexed flushing. My particular contribution required 2.5 flushes. A kick-ass private shower room. Did I mention free food and complimentary beer and wine? Ow!

After finally making it to our apartment, we were toast. When I finally got into bed, I took a deep breath in preparation for the next day. Thanks to Steve Smith, we’d be hooking up with Melbourne’s own Shifter Dan.

Saturday came like that. It felt like I slept 30 seconds. Tina and I got up, did some quick unpacking and set out to do a little exploring. On our agenda, was to do some food shopping. Tina being familiar with Melbourne knew exactly where to take us. Me being a devout meat worshiper, was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get my fix. Dumb Jay. We entered the famed Queen Vic market through the flea market section and found some sweet bootleg items. Pretty much everything sold here is a knock off. Except for the Uggs. They’re so lame that not even the bootleggers will knock ‘em off.

Well like I said, once we got into the actual market I was rapt with astonishment in how these people stock themselves with meat and food products available in every color of the rainbow. Each counter did at least one thing unique.

There were also barkers at most meat counters. They were just like the ones outside strip clubs back home. Enticing you in with a promise of fresh, mouth watering, intoxicatingly robust meat…. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. Queen Vic market rules.

After getting a bunch of treats for ourselves we wrapped up the shopping and headed over to Shifter Bikes to meet up with Dan.

Upon arriving, we were greeted with cold ones and met a group of kids (including misses shifter, Emma) and immediately hit it off. Eventually we got a little irritated by the noise from the pole dancing class upstairs, so we hopped on bikes and headed to one of the local pubs. We found ourselves on the rooftop beer garden at The Fox Hotel and made quick work of about fifty pots (glasses of beer a little smaller than a pint).

Not realizing a couple of hours had passed, we made our way over to the Tote, a bar/night club not unlike the storied Night Break. We sunk right into more tasty brews, chatted it up with some of Dan’s mates who joined us and got into some weird booze called chartreuse.

The bar had a sweet jukebox. I heard a bunch of Pogues amongst other classic shit. I could be at the worst bar ever (holy cow) and if the Pogues came on, I’d forget all about how crappy the bar is. Anyway, further into the night a little gewgaw hanging from a wall caught my eye. Looking closely I saw that it was a voodoo doll of Steve Smith of HTATBL fame. I knew it was a Steve voodoo doll because he was dressed like a pirate. The other thing that gave it away is that it was hanging next to Steve’s favorite band. I refrained from sticking pins in the voodoo doll on account that I left all my pins at home.

Towards the end of the eve, we made our way to the upstairs to check out the live music. Right about here is where I started losing the night to the drink. When I was fast asleep (passed out) on the bar, Tina made the executive decision to beat it. I supported that decision with my deadweight tumbling straight into a cab. First night out in Melbourne tucked nicely into our pockets.

Sunday went pretty much as expected. This day was going to be for loafing. Sweet awesome loafing. Lying about watching Bear Grilles survive his way out of this and that. A homemade prawn soup rounded it all out quite nicely.

Monday morning. There’s a bit of rain out. Kinda windy too. We were going to try and get over to Shifter to pick up some townies so that we would be a bit more mobile. But it doesn’t look good. Tina has to go into the office so I think I'll putz around and get what work done that I can. I’m currently working on a spring program for swobo and I need to work primarily through email. I do have skype and what phone calls I can make I will. That should save some time.

Dinner time. We’re roasting a chicken that we got from the market. Shit. The roasting pan that the apts owner supplied doesn’t fit in the oven. Fortheloveofsheeba. We managed to use a dripping pan that came with the oven and the bird turned out awesome. This will make great chicken salad. Oh yeah, can’t forget to boil the carcass for stock.

Tuesday. I really want to get set up with a bike so I can start riding. I’m going to hook up with Dan at his other “job” at Total Rush over in Richmond. This shop is so spotless you can eat off of any surface inside, even the workbench. I say “job” because his job description is basically to do what we should all do after riding our bikes. Give ‘em a little love with the rag and brush. A little lube. Give all bolts a once over and you’re done. I never do it. And if I had a great paying job I’d probably bring my bikes to Dan as well. But that would be gay. So I’m not going to get a great paying job. There.

I got there right around the end of Dan’s shift. Enough time to do a few tweaks to a loner single speed and take off to meet some more kids and drink some brews. We end up at some square where a few of Dan’s friends are practicing their fixie moves. I’m really terrible with names. I forget them all the time. I could be talking to you just after being introduced and listening to you while thinking in my head, “what the fuck is his name?” then you’d go, “you forgot my name didn’t you?” and I’d go, “nah. nah. I was just trying to remember where I met that chick over there. I’m going to go say hi.”

Oh, I should mention at this point, tina b. was feeling a little tie tie so she opted out of jamming around on bikes in favor of heading home to the sauna.

So, yeah. Eventually we decided to check out an art opening. When we made it to the small gallery, it was a little crowded inside. We opted to peer into the windows to look at the art and frankly it didn’t impress. One beer down and we said fuck it. Onward to the next stop. We jammed over to downtown and into some sketchy little alley. For a split second I thought I was going to get whacked, but I don’t have that exciting of a life. Into a tiny nondescript doorway, through a little bar and up some stairs I found myself in the strangest setting I’ve seen in a while. The bar was basically top floor of an old masonry building where some corrugated steel was just slapped down for a roof. Weird, but really cool. They served up Melbourne Bitter in a 750ml bottle. I thought they were delicious, but was quickly corrected that they were indeed “shit”. Well you are what you eat so I drank up.

After Sister Bella we made our way over to a fancier spot that claimed great mixed drinks. I would be the judge of that. I asked the bartender if she could make a cocktail with cilantro (which is called coriander here), ginger, cucumber and vodka. She didn’t flinch, but I could see by the expression on her face that it was an odd request. This concoction is one of my favorites. An SF bartender, Tawei, introduced me to it and I always have it if the bar has all the ingredients. I passed the beverage around to my associates and got a good response. At least one more would be in order.

Right abouts now we were feeling the hunger so I was promptly led to a late night Chinese diner. This place was also in some dingy little alley. It seems all the rad places are where you would only stumble upon them if you didn’t already know about them. We had some delicious oysters, some duck, some mushrooms. All kinds of shit. We killed everything.

After eating I was getting pretty tired and rather than totally shattering myself again I decided to pack it in. I was pretty sure of my whereabouts but none the less my counterparts felt it fitting to escort me home. Total class. If they weren’t dudes, I’d totally invite them in for a coffee. Off to bed.