I was supposed to meet Scott around 10 or 11 sunday morning in the city. But Mackey one of the other guys here got bit by a spider and his leg blew up, literally like a balloon. So Scott was going to go with him to get it checked out. I ended up getting on the 1230 Gold Coast train which takes about an hour from Brisbane. Scott and I arrived at the Nerrang train station and just needed to catch a cab to the nearby Carrera Stadium where the tournament was being held.
As we walked up to the site and there was a slight breeze carrying the immediately identifiable sweet smell of the lush green banks of the river. There where boats scattered all over the place with their chrome twinkling under the hot australian sun. We could just barely hear the faint hum of a large v-drive plowing through the water over the drone of hip hop and and announcer found at every wakeboard tournament across the globe.
It was a gorgeous cloudless day, and I was at home. I was flooded with feelings and memories from the thousands upon thousands of days spent at the lake. It was like I had just walked down the street from my house on a warm summer day to our park, It felt good.
We headed down towards the announcers area in search of someone who looked important. Our goal was to meet a few kids in the area that had a boat… so we could mooch some rides. We started talking to the Announcer, I ended up finding out that he was the guy I emailed like 6 months ago when I first decided upon coming here, looking for an internship. He is the editor for Boarder Magazine, the Australian equivalent to Alliance over in the states. I had emailed him back and forth about the possibilities of doing some internship type work for the magazine, or the the local tour doing some sort of design or advertising/PR type things. He had seemed keen to the idea in the beginning but and we corresponded through email back and forth a few times. But soon became un-responsive and after emailing him when I arrived in Brisbane as per request, and receiving no reply I decided to give up. He seemed just as un-interested in our existence or the fact we had traveled so far just to come meet fellow wakeboarders and create a common cross cultural bond at the wakeboard tournament.
So we moved along to start talking to some of the riders. We ended up meeting Jeff Weatherall the 2005 Australian Pro Tour Champion and ripper on the Pro Wakeboard Tour and talking to him quite a bit. He filled us in on the scene down here, told us about the video he was going to shoot in Tahiti this week, and then gave us his phone number to give him a call for a ride when he got back. We also ended up meeting a few other guys around the South East Queensland Area who have some boats to ride with. So in that respect it has been a successful trip so far.
But now that we have got here and we have mingled the event is wrapping up, we need to figure out a way to get home. Neither of us being responsible enough to have a taxi service phone number to get back to the train station, we start mingling around with a new goal in mind, finding a ride home. We starting talking to this chick for quite a while about this trip she is going on to china. She is going to wakeboard at the World Expo in China, she will be gone for 7 months… all expenses paid trip with some built in sight seeing… to wakeboard in one show each night, with free riding all day everyday! How wicked is that, and the thing was she didn’t even win the local event, she was just in the right place at the right time. Man some people are like that, their whole lives are just about being in the right place at the right time and things fall into their laps left and right… others work their buts off and get nothing… so I wanted to see how it all happened. But everyone was heading out and we still didn’t have a ride. So she intoduced us to one of her friends who was heading back to Brisbane. He offered to drive us all the way back which was cool. But we had paid for a round trip rail ticket… we really only needed to go the 2 miles down the road to the train station but he offered so we obliged… and had a good chat along the way.
As soon as we see the Brisbane Skyline ahead in the distance I noticed we turn off at an interchange and head in the complete wrong direction. He tells us that he really doesn’t live anywhere near brisbane and is dropping his friend off at the Airport and that is where we should hop out. Well okay I suppose thats not so bad… its really only a 15-20 min train ride back to the city center. But when we go to purchase tickets we find out that its a “private” loop which is absolutely complete rubbish… it was the exact train we were on a mere 4 hours ago going to the exact same place. It is just so they can be the only public transportation to and from the Airport and the city to charge you a whopping 13 dollars for a student half price ticket!!!!! I about died when I heard that. I had no money left we had already paid for a round trip, from the Nerrang Station, but in our attempt to get home by hitching a ride we obviously made an enormous mistake and we were paying for it. There was nothing we could do now.
In conclusion if you ever find yourself stuck at the Brisbane Airport either be prepared to spend 26 bucks to get to the city 20 minutes away or prepare yourself for a short 20 min walk to the nearest train station down the line back to the non “private” train station, where the ticket you most likely purchased 3 hours earlier will get you on it for free!
Tagged: Architecture, pro wakeboard tour