The Gambler

Are you a gambler? It seems for a lot of people - perhaps more blokes - it's a pretty popular pass time. I wouldn't call myself a punter. Yes, I like the Spring Racing Carnival and if I'm at the track, I'll have a flutter, but I confess, if I have three straight looses I totally loose interest and stop betting. 

And it's not like we're talking sheep stations - five or ten bucks either way (win or place) is my modus operandi. And if someone far more informed than me wants to 'chuck on a quaddie', I'm in! 

Oh - and there was the time the girls from the office and I went to the greyhounds - which I cannot believe I didn't blog about so stand by for a post on that outing.

Anyway, having never thought of myself as a gambler, I surprised myself with the bets I've been prepared to make during lockdown; notably travel. 

Back in May, I decided to book a holiday for January 2022 - hiking in New Zealand. I asked the kids - one was keen, one was reluctant so I pretty much bullied the reluctant starter into committing. Now, I'm not sure if you're a hiker but these organised walks aren't inexpensive so I was pretty annoyed when, at the end of lock down, the enthusiastic one had lost interest claiming we'd all spent waaaay too much time together this year. Not wrong, but still.

Then one of the two hikes I booked was cancelled. This left us in a bit of pickle - do we hope the whole thing gets cancelled and get all our money back? Book something else to fill in those extra days? Cut our losses and cop cancellation fees? In the end, I managed to change Geoff and my hikes to a longer one and cancel the girls with no penalty - yay! Elle has a friend with a house at Queenstown so they're using the girls' non-refundable flights and Sass didn't ever want to go anyway - winners. Although let's wait and see what's next with COVID...

In addition to travel, we had dinner at a friend's recently and I offered to bring dessert. Living on the edge, I chose a chocolate tart with orange ice-cream and orange jam from Gourmet Traveller that I'd never made before, and against the odds - thanks to my Aldi ice-cream maker, it worked out pretty well!

So there you go.  As someone who proclaims not to be much of a gambler, I'm taking some pretty big bets!!

Why we didn't win gold

Okay - so we came 16th in the whole wide world and we got to the end with all crew members still in the boat so as far as we're concerned, we are winners!!!

True, the only qualification for the World Masters Games is being old enough. In fact, the oldest competitor, a 101 year old woman from India did the 100 metre sprint in just 1:14 and got a PB in the shot put today with a throw of 2.1 metres. Go her, we all say.

And yes, there were only 18 in our competition, but there were some mitigating circumstances that make the 28 second gap between us and the gold medalists seem, frankly, pretty bloody impressive!

Here we go:

• My cracked rib probably didn't help (but drugs and strapping did!)
• We trained with a 'bow-side rigged boat' only to arrive and discover the 'stern-side rigged boats' from the hire pool couldn't be re-rigged. Eek! That meant that the order we sat in the boat wasn't as trained - I was meant to stroke but Sal L had to step in - and she did a sterling job BTW!
• There wasn't a cox available from the pool for training. Poor Sal L's cousin happened to be there to watch so we threw her in the cox seat and she  did her best as we zig-zagged our way up the course. Not overly encouraging.
• We haven't been rowing that long. Women in our division we met at the car hire place announced they'd been rowing together for 15 years - we've spent 5 months mastering a sweep boat - including a break over Christmas/New Year and accomodating various hair appointments
• The competition is pretty stiff. Where do you think all those Olympians, World, National and State champions go to row when their career has finished? The World Masters Games!!

What did work for us:

• Glorious weather. I'd seriously imagined howling winds, waves and rain coming in sideways. It was gorgeously sunny and still. 
• A team of excellent coaches back at the Hawthorn Rowing Club in Melbourne who managed to get us this far - mostly Ben but also Emma, Jade, Nikki and Luciano
• An amazingly positive team dynamic and a can do attitude
• Alcohol. Unlike some athletes, we chose to keep our drinking steady rather than abstain. As one member said, stopping now could send our bodies into shock - and we couldn't be having that
• A random cox from the pool - a 16 year old student from Auckland called Camille - she was seriously awesome
• Our team manager Andrew, who's been driving us around (although he did try to run me over in the hire car before the race - that's another story!) and pouring the gin and tonics - bless!
• Our gold jackets! They've started so many conversations.

So although we didn't win, we feel like winners. Three of us still have running events to complete but we're already 'International Athletes!'

If we can hang in there long enough, we may get gold in about 20 years time.

Bad timing

So we've arrived in New Zealand and are now ensconced in our abode in Cambridge as the excitement builds for The World Masters Games, 2017.

We've already met quite a few competitors - I think our matching gold bomber jackets were the give away! - and there's a real camaraderie among the crowd.

The crew in the Qantas Lounge at about 5am this morning.

However...

I fell off my bike on Easter Monday and it wasn't pretty. We'd literally just ridden into the city and had a late lunch before I was due to be picked up for rowing training when it happened. As so often the case, we'd arrived home and as I pulled into the lane way, I turned to see where Geoff and Sass were and lost my balance. With my feet stuck in my stupid pedal straps (in truth, they're great when you're riding because you can pull up as well as push down) the whole event switched into slow motion as I fell hard and flat onto the concrete.

The trap - as opposed to the strap.

I lay there, winded, trying to work out which bits of me hurt most. I'd grazed a knee and an elbow. I copped a decent bruise on one leg - but the real damage was landing on the side of my chest. It's probably what winded me and it really hurt.

Being committed, I went off to rowing and it was sore but didn't seem aggravated so that was good.

And here we are, five days and a another hard training session later and, at certain angles or movements, it's still really, really bad. It wakes me up when I move my sleep and aches in the morning.

I think I may have cracked a rib.

Having already postponed one procedure to be here in New Zealand (more about that one later), there was no way I was going to the doctor to possibly have it confirmed and risk being told not to row.

Neurofen is my new best friend.

So we just need to get through training tomorrow and the race on Monday and we're done!

So you think you can ski?

It's true. I thought I could ski.

Okay - I didn't start until I was in uni, but a season as a chalet girl in Italy ended with us being able to ski a gorge that we'd hiked for a couple of hours to reach. Yes, it was extremely scary, but also exhilarating. I've not done anything like that since but I did feel it had left me a 'capable' skier.

After that there were several skiing weekends with work and friends and when George and Jaz - and then Elle -  were little, we spent five days skiing with family friends at Mt Buller for seven consecutive years.

This last Christmas we skied in Japan. And now we're in Queensland, New Zealand.

Our first day was at Coronet Peak. Elle and I joined the guided tour after lunch with a few others and we all described ourselves as 'intermediate'. In truth, we were a bit better than one couple and probably on par with the others (guides excluded!). So weren't we surprised when our next ski day at Treble Cone proved we can't ski to save ourselves.

Having done a couple of warm up runs in the home bowl and  checked Sass into ski school, we moved over to the second bowl over the back and O...M...G. It didn't look that challenging from the chair lift so I skied straight over the front - cautiously followed by Elle and Geoff. It was an ungroomed Red run - so not even Black, the most difficult. (We've now come to realise that Black isn't a standard and when the snow is a bit crunchy and ungroomed it can be the difference between do-able and down-right dangerous!) It was so steep and the snow so unforgiving and I was so fearful of falling, I couldn't turn and actually had to sit down on my bottom and flip my skis back the other way. How embarrassing.....

Ignore my religious-looking head gear and check out the scenery - amazing!

We eventually managed to pick our way down to a point where we could get back onto a groomed piste only to be further humiliated by a kid who I swear was 5, shoot past us at the speed of light, his mum and siblings calmly swooshing after him. We looked like absolute amateurs.

But as the day wore on, something started to become clearer.... everyone we met on the chair lifts were locals. Okay - one guy was from Australia - but he was working there having done three seasons at Thredbo - so he might as well have been local. I shared a lift with an older guy who was complaining heli-skiing was ruined by people who can't ski. I thought he was boasting to his companion but it was also revealed he's a guide for the 'back country' - ie of the map.

At lunch, (a delicious NZ$18 pork belly with apple gravy, glazed carrots, peas and onion and garlic roasted baby potatoes no less!) we noticed all the families knew each other. We were clearly tourists.

We've since skied The Remarkable (rudely dubbed 'Unremarkable' by a Treble Cone local) and Cardrona so have our confidence back - just.

Swings and Roundabouts

Years ago, we decided to stop buying the insurance to cover the $2-3,000 excess of rental cars. It was almost as much a day as the cost of the car. So we bit the bullet and decided if we ever need to pay the excess, we'd still be ahead. Of course this has its own risks - you need access to that kind of cash should you need. (However, I've also since discovered the annual travel insurance policy we now take out covers it. Am I the only one who always feels like I have insurance on insurance??) Anyway, the point is, that was probably over 10 years ago and by now, with no accidents, we're definitely ahead.

So I'm desperately trying to apply that same logic to cheap airline tickets.

We didn't have anything planned this year, so on a whim, I booked to go skiing in Queenstown, New Zealand. I'd like to say now, I did check the dates with my other half, the one I'm not allowed to mention on my blog and he said that sounded okay. So I booked.

Two weeks later, the invitation to the wedding of the cousin of he-who-can't be-mentioned-on-my-blog arrived. And no, this wasn't a surprise. He (and I guess me too) had known about this since the start of the year at least - just no one got around to putting it in the diary - and yes, it's interstate on the day we were meant to be flying to New Zealand. Oops.

Having tossed around a couple of options it was clear there was no option - I needed to move the very cheap, not-really-flexible flights.

I managed to change one with the same airline at a cost of about 70% of the original tickets. (Cheap suddenly became kind of expensive...) The other airline had no flights on the day (well, none that took less than 26 hours on what is a 3 hour direct flight) so we just had to forfeit those. I did think Geoff and I could have had a weekend in Wellington without the kids - but no, you can't change the names on the tickets with an international flight - ever!!! Probably can't change the destination either.

I had booked and paid for the accommodation through a new online booking company that's based in Turkey. When I cancelled, I got all my money put back on my Visa within a few days as promised. Phew. I then found an even better deal on another site so that was a small consolation.

I've tried about 8 times to change the car hire booking on cartrawler.com - god knows that doesn't work. I'll have to ring them.

So to console myself, I keep thinking of the many other, hitch-free cheap flights we've had over the years and think this day was always coming - but I'm sure I'm still well ahead!

PS Sorry about the gap between posts - you can tell when work gets very busy!!