There are some things we haven’t really spoken about in our website journey entries. Not for lack of attention because as anyone who has travelled with us knows, we have spoken about them very often. As I approach this topic I wonder at what lays ahead for us boys in the next year; university, jobs, visiting schools and festivals, MyPOWER book and movie projects. Where will our time come from? We will make it happen I’m sure of that, including time for other things...
As Matt Coggan once famously said, “I swear I’m not in it for the chicks”. Let me tell you, if any of us were “in it for the chicks” then we would have been back home a long time ago. Surprising as it may seem “chicks”, as Matt affectionately calls them, generally do not hang out at free rest areas where there is no supply of water or shade and you have to dig your own toilet. These are places of quiet contemplation or places where four boys yell jokes at each other at the top of their voices because nobody else is around. One game we loved to play in the desert is the ghoul-song game. It involves replacing words in a song or movie with the word ghoul. Examples include “Ghoul Runnings” and “Ghoul’s Gold” getting as ridiculous as “Honey I shrunk the ghouls”, “Ghoulless in Seattle” and “Jurassic Ghoul”. How embarrassing.
We have spent over seven months out of this year in the middle of nowhere, possibly as far from anybody our age as you can get. No dudes, no lady’s just grey nomads and us. It was kind of weird when for a couple of months, everybody you speak to is at least three times your age. We have totally lost touch with the world of “cool”. I have no idea what the latest songs are or what aussie bands are emerging or what brand of jeans are this year’s hit. I couldn’t tell you which sunglasses are “so hot right now” and which celebrity couple is making headlines. Have I missed anything? Definitely not! I think my life has been enriched by forgetting about all these abstract arbitrary topics that seem to fill up a young person’s mind.
The best example of this is when we were in Perth. I was sitting at the beach having a look around and I saw this guy sitting near me. He was listening to an iPod (I gathered that much) but as he lifted it up I realised I had never seen it before. I asked him what it was and he shrugged at me and said, “it’s the new semi-mini-nano 2Gb mp4 iPod”. I felt like one of those old men who had lost touch with the times and says things like, “this world wide web internet thing is gonna be big one day”. This is the kind of thing that I would definitely know about if I was still at home. I love my music and I love my music devices. At the same time I was happy that the fashionable world of music was moving on without me while I was in the desert.
So that’s how we lost “the cool”. We rock up to social events on the east coast dressed in our daggy, dirty and derelict clothes and feel comfortable. We see wannabe Corey Delaney’s (that 16 yr old who hosted a stupid party in Melbourne) with big white sunglasses, stylish jackets, designer jeans and look at ourselves and laugh. “Get some new clothes, you bum” we often joke to each other. All the designer clothes you can shake an American Xpress at will not prove very helpful however when those guys are too scared to speak to other people. Keeping to themselves in a group, almost oozing cool, you can nearly smell it as you walk past.
I think us MyPOWER boys are not afraid of having a chat thanks to our apprenticeship in conversation- only talking to grey nomads for seven months. We now easily feel confident that we have learnt how to generate a decent conversation, people our age is just a bonus. I think maybe that is why we have made so many great friends our age around Australia because we just love having a chat to people. I will say however, on a trip like this you find it very easy to talk (about anything) it seems that amazing things never stop happening to us.
Like today, what was supposed to be a boring day packing up for the boys before they headed back down to Sydney was amazing. We spent the morning swimming and then chilling on the grass on some bean bags in a big circle, all reading different parts of the Sunday paper and sipping on coffees. A simple little relaxing morning with some mates from home, could it be a little taste of what we have missed or a special event that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t MyPOWER? I found myself so relaxed and so happy to be surrounded by friends, people rising at random moments to complete 20 pushups and a plethora of jokes and laughs. I think I wouldn’t appreciate or even remember a lazy Sunday morning with a group of mates if I hadn’t been away.
Just at a time when it’s easy to feel that the MyPOWER tour could be petering out to an end, we have been injected with a sense of inspiration and new flavours thanks to the visits of our friends from home. A little injection of “cool” in terms of new music was also grasped with both ears. Nothing beats the classics though, and I can remember three separate occasions where we were all singing to “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits being blasted out from “Oprah Smurf”. So I farewell our friends that carpooled to Crescent Head with mucho respecto for doing the right thing, thanks for making the effort to come up and hope that they will get home safely.
Quote of the day
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
- Abraham Lincoln