In effect last week was spent counting the days until Sunday arrived. I worked a few days, watched a few films and so on but mostly just did a lot of walking and did my best to spend little money.
On Saturday I didn't get to my bed until around 1.30am and I got back up again at 3.30am for a quick shower before phoning a taxi to take me to Adelaide Airport. Upon arriving at the airport around 5am I was a bit shocked to find that the check-in desk for my flight was not yet open although my flight was due to be leaving at 6am. So I kicked around for about half an hour with a few other passengers which seemed to be experiencing something similar for their Qantas flight. At around 5.30am someone eventually arrived at the Jetstar desk so I hurried to check in, not wanting to be the cause of any further delay to my flight.
On going through security I was "randomly" selected for extra checks to make sure I wasn't carrying explosives. Funny that they never asked the single mother in front of me.
Once through security I walked up to my gate to find that the flight number wasn't even being displayed on the screen so it wasn't surprising that there were no staff members around.
By 6am, when my flight was supposed to be leaving I was getting a bit pissed off that the plane was still in darkness, there was still no staff around and the flight number still wasn't on the screen.
At 6.10am I remembered that the clocks had gone back an hour at midnight.
With 50 minutes to kill I decided that the best thing to do would be go to the bar and have a double vodka and coke. For some reason I was the only person in the bar at that time.
The flight went fine after that. I arrived in Avalon on time. Avalon's Melbourne's second airport. It's about 45 minutes out of the city centre and is pretty much just a farm with a runway.
I was in the CBD for 9am, grabbed a quick bite to eat and then caught one of the free trams down to the Albert Park circuit. Once there I spent an hour or so wandering around, looking at all the different stalls and exhibitions and taking a few photos.
I then went to meet up with Pete, a guy I had met when I was staying in Melbourne, and one of his housemates. They'd managed to secure a good spot on a hill next to the Clark stand, between turns 9 and 10. We sat there to watch the V8 Supercars race as well as the BMW Celebrity Challenge and some cool aerobatic shows by the RAAF Roulettes, the Australian version of the Red Arrows, and an F/A 18 Super Hornet. That spot on the hill also gave us a good view of the drivers parade.
By now there were five of us on the hill as we'd been joined by a guy who works with Pete and a friend of his. It turned out that the guy who worked with Pete was from Falkirk and after a little further questioning I found out that this guy called Michael was Lucy Thom's big brother. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Lucy she is a girl who I know from both primary school and high school, in fact we shared the same common room in 5th and 6th year. It was one of those "It's a small world" moments.
At 2pm it was time for the final formation lap and the race started. And what a race it was.
There was never ant real doubt that Fernando Alonso was going to lose the race as soon as he passed Jenson Button right after the first safety car period but the rest of the race included a lot of overtaking and a load of crashes, most notably Michael Schumacher driving into a wall. Even standing in the middle of a sea of Ferrari fans was not enough to restrain me from making a few loud comments, mocking the arrogant German. If it wasn't for the commentary coming out over the speakers and the fact that we had a giant screen in front of us it would've been almost impossible to figure out exactly what was going on as the cars blurred past one by one.
With eleven laps to go we decided to leave our spot on the hill so that we could go the bar and still have enough time to make it up to the start/finish straight in time for the podium celebrations. So we did just that and managed to make it just in time to watch the goings on at the podium, albeit from a very tight angle. After the celebrations we walked around the track a bit before leaving the circuit to have a few more drinks at a bar just outside the park.
We all went our separate ways at about 6pm so I headed back to the CBD to have a KFC (can't beat that taste) and killed the remaining time before I had to get my coach in an internet cafe. I spent a bit of that time on MSN talking to Swag about the 15 year old he pulled on Saturday night. Let me be clear, in no way do I endorse that kind of behaviour.
So at 9pm I headed to Greyhound's shed of a coach terminal on Franklin St and commenced the long and incredibly uncomfortable journey back to Adelaide. The journey took about 10 hrs and although I slept on and off during the journey I still felt shattered by the time the coach arrived in Adelaide at about 6am on the Monday morning.
For some reason still unknown to me I decided to walk home from the bus terminal, a journey which took about 2 hrs and 15 mins including a quick stop at the supermarket to buy some food. It was no wonder that after that I went straight to bed and slept until about 3.30pm.
I really could've done without working on Monday night as my legs and feet were killing me, not to mention that my face had got a bit sunburnt leaving me with panda eyes. I made up for it by doing absolutely nothing on Tuesday except watch Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room on dvd.
