All posts by muttler

Nov

The Great Great Showdown Hunt

Winners of the Great Melbourne Showdown Hunt

Howdy everyone on this gloriously sunny Melbourne afternoon. Kate and I just got back from a wild adventure that I thought I would share.

First of all, I love the work of Scott C. If you don’t know Scott’s stuff, he is the mastermind behind the Great Showdowns series, which you can check out here: Scott’s Awesome Showdowns

As you can see, they are just the darn cutest and coolest paintings out there. I am super lucky to have the original of one of my favourite movies, Repo Man, that I got from one of his Gallery 1988 shows… I couldn’t believe no one had picked it up when the remainder when on sale online. Winner me!

Anyway, recently he has been doing a very cool series of treasure hunts, painting variations of his trademark showdowns, and hiding them in famous movie locations. So far they have pretty much been all in the US. But recently this changed. The #GreatShowdownsHunt became the #GreatGreatShowdownsHunt! Yep! It was now a worldwide event!

It was cool to watch the first few days from afar, Scott and his co-conspirators tweeting clues and people madly seeking them out. So many of my favourite films… Scott Pilgrim, Royal Tenenbaums, Vertigo… just so cool. And then he tweeted what I could only have dreamt of… “Amazing work, gang! Day 5 comes to a close. Day 6 starts at noon Australian time! In Sydney, Melbourne, and Tokyo!”.

HUH?! Melbourne?! YES!!!!

I madly tried to think of what movie it would be. The films shot in Melbourne that I thought were a strong chance were Where The Wild Things Are and Mad Max. Two near to Scott’s heart I knew too. But there were always the wildcards of other minor films that had a cult following. Hhhmmm. My bet was on those first two.

So Kate and I had some errands to run. I told Kate all about the hunt and that I would love to be heading toward the city around noon, when the clues were scheduled to drop. She was up for some detective work, so it was a plan.

We were in the car getting close to the CBD when noon hit and Kate exclaimed “it’s up!”. The movie? Chopper! I had not picked that one! A picture of the painting was up, along with the following clue:

Chopper!

“This is a story of a very tough, wise cracking criminal. At one point, he had a buddy cut off his ears, so he can be transferred to another area of the prison! He does some crazy things in his life and decides to write a book about it. He becomes famous because of this book. What jail was this guy being tough in?”

Pentridge Prison! In Coburg! It was not either of the two I thought. Hhmmm… we were probably about 20 minutes away. “Should we go?” I asked Kate. With only a seconds thought, she said “Yep, lets go!”. So off we went up Punt Road towards the site of the former Pentridge Prison.

For those of you unfamiliar, this was a hard-ass prison that was shut down a while ago and was in the process of being turned into a housing estate. This was not a small diner or specific location… this was going to involve some walking, as the prison is in a state of being torn down and turned into the estate. But I knew key parts of the prison still stood and were likely to be the home of this little treasure.

Thanks to some fairly light traffic, we arrived probably 25 minutes into the hunt. Twitter was not telling us it had been found, with Kate keeping constant eye on it the whole way. We were now officially in the chase!

We started at one of the main parts that looked like the old prison but was now a hip cafe. Peering in all the nooks and crannies and windows and doorways we were not finding anything. So we kept making our way around the old prison walls (or at least the ones left). We hit what used to be the main entrance. It has to be here we thought! But alas, nope.

For the next half an hour we wandered around, always keeping an eye on Twitter. Still nothing. We suspected another couple of folk wandering were in the hunt, and it wasn’t until a tweet to Scott, and bumping into her numerous times that we spoke of our adventure. Indeed she was on the lookout as well… competition!

Scott tweeted a hint… “Alright, Melbourne. Here’s a hint. It’s behind bars! Actual bars.”. This was something to go with! We checked all windows and doors again but nothing.

Over an hour had passed since the kick off and still empty handed. Kate and I jumped back in the car to drive around the site, looking for places we hadn’t visited. Nothing. Hhhmmm. Had it been found and not reported?

A Clue!

In order to rethink our strategy, and get some sustenance, we wandered into the cafe we started at for some lunch. We had just sat down when a tweet from Scott came through. It was a picture of where it was! “What should we do?” I asked Kate. “Should we stay or go look?”. “Let’s go look” was her answer, so we were off again! Our only competition was nearby so wanting it found, I shared the pic with her. So off we went. Conveniently, the doorway was actually just near the cafe and we recognised it as we walked past. We had looked there already. Hhhmmm. But we were 100% sure it was the doorway! Had it been taken already?

I did some fishing around with my arm, but nothing. Then Kate had the genius idea. The one that she has the right to brag about forever. “Get your camera on your phone and look around the side of the door we can’t see.” Holy cow that is genius! So I got the phone out and looked…

IT WAS THERE!!!

Woah! We were excited! We tried reaching through the bars but could not reach it. Clearly a breeze had blown it out of sight. What to do, what to do. We grabbed a nearby stick, and given Kate’s arms were a little longer, she did some fishing and… YES! She knocked it in plain sight!

She was having some trouble, so I grabbed the stick and easy… easy… YES YES! It was ours! We won the Melbourne showdown!

It is ours!

Straight away we tweeted to Scott to let him know our success. We were SO excited. What started as a crazy idea turned into the best fun, and with a new Scott C original to show for it. And a Melbourne one to boot.

We were so buzzing. We were high fiving and fist bumping like there was no tomorrow. To settle we decided to head back to the cafe that we rudely ran out of and have some lunch. The spoils of victory!

Our awesome prize from Scott

So that is our crazy adventure. What started as a “should we? shouldn’t we?” we were so glad we said, yep let’s go on a great showdown hunt. Hope you enjoyed the story everyone.

We need to finish with a HUGE thanks to the great man Scott C (@scottlava on Twitter) for making it possible and thinking of us fans all around the world. He truly is rad. Thanks man!

Oct

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (with respect to Murakami-san)

By: muttler

marathon

running

PROOF

So I just ran a marathon. Yep. 42.195km. I hope you can indulge me to tell you all about it (and to allow me to record my day).

Many of you know that I was embarking on this craziness this year. I have wanted to do one for years, having run a half marathon before. I tried a couple of time to get myself up for one, but got injured both times, so this was maybe my last attempt at giving it a go. My dodgy back had been good for quite a while now, so 2015 was looking like it could be it.

But it wasn’t just all me that got me psyched to give it a crack. My awesome bud Paul (aka @TheJacksonian) was a massive influence in convincing me that this could indeed be the year. So with some goading of each other on the last day of early bird registration, we were registered for our first marathons! Damn, what were we thinking!

So off we embarked on our respective journeys to the big day of October 18th. Given we live on opposite sides of the city, our training partnership was mostly in the motivational realms. Pounding the pavement was done in isolation, but there were always the emails of musings on running and Runkeeper to inspire each other. I even jetted over to Vilnius in Lithuania for a week for work and took my running shoes. It was all go!

my trusty mode of transport

I even popped in to The Running Company in Clifton Hill and had my gait analysed and got fitted for shoes. Chris and co were great and got me fitted in some Brooks runners that felt as light as air and running on pillows. I was set!

Then, boom. I got injured. I had worked my way up to 21km VERY nicely… I was running good times and feeling sweet. But a couple of days after that long run my right hip decided it was not happy. And not just the “I’m sore” type of not happy, but the “agony when even walking” not happy. I rested for a week and half and tried to run but alas I couldn’t even make the end of the street. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Not again.

I was pretty down. But Kate stepped in and talked me off the edge, got my head straight and got me into see her sports massage guru Gillian. I had to give it a go. Gillian weaved her magic, letting me know she didn’t think there was anything too wrong in there, and ironed me out. A few days later I was feeling not too shabby. Good enough to get a short run out. There was hope!

A series of deep massages got me feeling good and thinking that there might in fact be a marathon in 2015 after all. But there was only a bit over 2 months to get my training in. Yikes!

So I went at it. I walked the tightrope of wanting to get kms in my legs but not over doing it. The plan was shorter runs through the week (2 or 3 through the week) and a big one on the weekend, upping by about 4kms each weekend. The focus was on distance, not pace. Whereas my pace was pretty good before the injury, the training just became about doing the bloody thing! So it went.

Paul was making great progress and was full of awesome tales of progress and motivation. I was happy with how I was tracking and thinking that yep, this was looking like it would happen. Yes! We were on track! I got my distance up to 32km about 3 weeks before, right at the time to start to taper. Couldn’t have planned it better 🙂

As the taper was happening, the next calamity arrived. Paul injured his calf. Damn damn damn. With just a couple of weeks to go. He can share his stories, but it was not pleasant. I know partly how he felt… tracking well and then getting struck down. But this was late in the piece. But there was still hope after his physio didn’t rule him out completely. He was going to give it a crack! The dude is tough as nails.

And so we arrive to October 17th, the day before. I had been carb loading through the week and trying to get my body right. Kate and I met with Paul, Maria and Mia for dinner on the Saturday night and had a cool catchup to share our nerves and worries. We just wanted to get on with it! So we got home and I was off to bed by bout 9pm.

October 18th. THE BIG DAY! I slept right through and woke up at about 4:15am. Yep, early. But with a 7am start, and needing time to get some fluid and food in, as well as make our way in to the start, 5am was time to mobilise. Kate was dropping me in, and we also needed to pick up Essi, a Finnish research colleague of mine that was in Melbourne for a couple of weeks, and then I managed to convince to do the marathon! It didn’t need much convincing, since she had already done 2, but it was great to have another pal out there on the track. So Kate and I picked up Essi, got dropped off, and we met Paul.

Half an hour to go! Lots of nervous energy all around as we waited for the start. We started in the 4hr 30min pack, feeling that was our best, most realistic place. 7am… BOOM! The starting gun went off! A few minutes later we crossed the start line and we were away!

Essi was going to be tracking 5hrs, so she was happy to run solo. Paul and I had every intention to make the marathon experience a personal one, but we found that once the crowds thinned out a little, that we had a pretty similar comfortable pace.So it looked like we were running buddies. As it turned out, we were both feeling pretty comfy, and found the balance between getting a good start, but not overdoing it.So we settled on about a 5:30-5:45 min/kms.

Our run took us through the city, down St Kilda Rd, around Albert Park lake, through St Kilda, and then on to Beaconsfield Parade. We were cruising and feeling good! We kept remarking how we were tracking better than we expected by this point, averaging about 5:45 min/km.

This is a time to digress to my running music. I have been quite particular about the music I like to run to. I started with really heavy and punk music, and then moved to more groove based music. By groove, I like LONG grooves. So my playlist for today was:

1. LCD Soundsystem – 45:33

2. Battles – La Di Da Di

3. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – In Your Mind Fuzz suite

4. Beastie Boys – Selection of tracks

5. My Disco – Selection of tracks

6. LCD Soundsystem – My fave tracks… Losing My Edge, Yeah, and Us vs Them

This was my playlist for much of my training, and I didn’t get sick of it. I also tried running to exclusively the theme from the Cantina Band in Star Wars, but that is another strange story you can ask me about.

So back to today. I left you on Beaconsfield Parade at Port Melbourne. This is one stretch we were worried about. About 8km down to Elwood along the water. Great spot for running if the wind is kind, but typically it is not. So how was it? Just a mild headwind down to the turning point. Winner! Along the way too it was awesome to see so many people out cheering the runners on. I high fived about 50 kids over the day which was so cool.

We hit 30km as we got back to St Kilda Rd (heading up that pain of a hill on Fitzroy St). It was around here Paul struggled a bit. I was doing OK, and he wanted to drop the pace a touch, so urged me to run on. Knowing that it was about now we would both hit the wall, I took him up on that and ran while I was still feeling OK. I pushed down St Kilda Rd, and then on to the tan around the gardens. Then BOOM. It hit me. I was starting to flag.

It was about 36km and I was up against it. As I ran up the gradual incline, my right hip started to give me grief. Oh man. Not now! It was pretty painful. Not enough to make me stop, but enough for my pace to drop from about 6:15 min/km, to approaching 7. Just keep running! If I felt I needed spurring on, I just looked at my left which I had written “RUN!” on in sharpie. It was my motivation and nod to another of motivational coaches CC, who when I posed the question of the best way to get to the start line, simply replied “run you pussy”. Can’t argue with that logic! So I was tracking for about a 4hr 20min completion. Dig deep!

Anyway, I pushed on and soon enough I was on the last 2km! It was about then I felt a hand on my back and some motivational words… it was Paul! He had pushed through and was seemingly full of beans! He got me at just the right time to spur me on. I probably would have been a touch slower but he kept me moving. We made our way on to Brunton Avenue, and then in to the mighty MCG. We were there!

That lap of the ‘G is a blur. Paul was looking good, I was struggling a bit, but I kept up. And then we hit the finish line at exactly the same time. YES!!!!! We just completed marathon!!! And a 4hr 20min marathon no less!!!!

Oh man we were jazzed. We were ecstatic. Neither of us thought we would do it that quick. My goals for the day were:

1. Finish

2. Don’t walk

3. An optimistic 4hr 30min time.

We blitzed it! I think we were so full of adrenaline we couldn’t stop moving. Well, that and we were worried that if we did we wouldn’t be able to get up 🙂

CHAMPIONS!

Strangely after the finish line we were led down into the belly of the MCG for drinks and to get our medal. Was a bit odd to be led out of the stadium. We would have to come back to meet all the girls who were there cheering us.As for the medal, usually I’m not that into them (I haven’t kept my Around The Bay ones for example), but this will be a keeper me thinks.

my super proud wife

So we headed out of the stadium. How to find the girls! I swung by the Team Monash tent and borrowed a phone and got hold of Kate. She was so pumped that we finished in that time, she was buzzing. So we organised to all meet outside the ‘G and recount our adventure.

So was that it? Time for rest right? Nope! It was time for a brew! We had well and truly earned it. So we wandered into the city and shacked up at Beer de Luxe and enjoyed a victory beer. It tasted sooooooo good.

the spoils of victory

With beer and food in our bellies it was time to call it a day with my running bud. We gave each other a big celebratory high five and pledged to share our aches and pains later in the week. My wonderful wife then proceeded to get me home.

So that’s it! I hope this wasn’t too rambling or boring. I just felt the need to blerch it all out, more so for future reference. After a bath and some rest I am feeling OK, although tomorrow morning is worrying me a little. I am imagining that everything will be seized up.

I don’t think I have any amazing words of wisdom or anything like that. I basically just put my mind to it and did it. That’s it. Kinda simple really. It takes discipline, and if you ask me what drives that discipline in me I really have no idea. If I say I’m doing something, then I’m gonna do it. So is another marathon on the list? Um, ask me later in the week…

P.S If you want to see the whole course and my times, check them out here! https://runkeeper.com/user/muttler/activity/676634423

Jul

A Week In Vilnius

By: muttler

lithuania

travel

Zappa watches over Vilnius

Howdy everyone! Hope this finds you all well.

You find me in Copenhagen airport as I try and fill in 5 hours of layover before my journey home starts in earnest. So where have I been? Vilnius in Lithuania of course!

The next question you may ask is “If you are on your way home, why haven’t we heard from you before this!”. Well, this has been a very quick trip just for work, so time has been precious, and I really saw precious little of my home for the week. But I got enough in to warrant a post about it. So here goes!

Journey started just a week ago, with a LOOONNNNGGG set of flights. Melbourne -> Singapore -> Copenhagen -> Vilnius. And that was also with 2.5 hours in Singapore and 6 hours in Copenhagen. So a long way to go just for a week, but you do that sometimes hey? Flights were uneventful in all the best ways, with a bit of time to find a crazy milk-based drink in a Singapore Airport convenience store…

mmm… milk soda

… and also time to chat to the locals in Copenhagen airport…

he bought a lot of lego

But really, before I knew it I was in Lithuania! Vilnius to be exact. I love an airport only 5km from the city centre. I just hopped a public bus and in only 15 minutes I was at my hotel. There was no time for dilly-dally though… I was straight into work! Only an hour after arriving I had my first conference catchup, a dinner with my working group for the conference.

The conference I attended was ITiCSE (Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education). I visited the conference in Sweden last year, and this year was a great chance to meet up with many folk I worked with while in Europe last year (I also had 2 papers to present). A big part of the work for the conference was being part of a formal “working group”. These are groups of researchers who want to focus on one particular topic and over the course of 2 days prior to the conference, and also as many hours as you could during the conference, we produce a 25 page research report on the area. Phew! It was going to be a busy week.

So I finally got to meet my colleagues face to face (after having Skyped many times in the lead up). I had met a few already in my trip to Finland last year so it was lovely to see them again, and it was also great to meet new people to work with. But work could wait. We had a casual dinner to chat and get to know each other, and decided the research discussions should continue over a wander about town.

the quiet main street of vilnius

Vilnius is a lovely city. All I really knew is that it had an “old town” like many European cities, and expected something like Tallin. However I found Vilnius to have a much more relaxed vibe to it. The lack of tourists was probably the main reason for this, but whatever the reason everyone was friendly and chilled out. One reason for this though was that Monday was a public holiday and apparently most people had left town for the weekend. Rather than stay in the city, they head to the coast or somewhere else. That led to eerily quiet streets at times.

Given it was staying light so late (until 10:30pm or so) it was a great city for wandering later in the evening. My hotel was located on one of the main streets and it was nice to wander down toward the Vilnius Cathedral which lay at the other end of the street. Along the way I saw one of the locals just hanging about…

hangin’ about

… and also spied some local death eaters…

look out harry!

Cathedral Square lay at the other end of the street. This was home to the Cathedral, Royal Palace, and Gediminas Hill. The cathedral and palace looked quite cool, however we would end up there later in the week, so we decided to head up the hill to check out the Vilnius skyline.

vilnius cathedral

gediminas (founder of vilinus) looks over the square

tower on the hill

Although not too high, the hill and its red brick tower afforded some nice views of the city.

look how fresh i look after 30 hours of travel!

sun sets over vilnius

The sunset from the hill was especially gorgeous, filling me with good vibes. Seeing it set on the old town and the greenery I had the feeling this would be a pretty nice place to be for the next week.

Here is where the next 5 days blur into each other a bit. Saturday and Sunday were both 10 hour days of working with my new research buddies. I wasn’t sure how it would go, with 17 of us all working away on the research, but our leaders Arto and Petri (both from Finland) were ace and we had a great camaraderie amongst the group and the desire to do some great work. Working groups are quite unique to this conference and although they are a lot of work (and you miss some of the conference because you are knee deep in doing more research) they establish some great working relationships, or strengthen them, as was the case for myself and Petri & Archie, both from Aalto University, where I worked last year.

hard at work

The first day was a lot of consolidation of the work we had done individually to that point and really nutting out the story we wanted to tell with our new work. The whole working group was invaluable also for just working with others and encountering different research styles. In the end we had 7 different nationalities represented… which means 6 other countries I can now work in 🙂

conducting research

Each night we would typically go out for a group dinner at one of the local pubs or restaurants. Vilnius had no shortage of pretty good places to eat. And the prices! 10 euro for a couple of courses (maybe 3) and a pint? Yes please!

running vilnius

I managed also to sneak a couple of runs in too which was nice. Although I can’t say either were particularly elegant, with the jetlag and the local speciality of potato dumplings filled with meat and the cheap beer weighing heavy in my stomach. The heat was also a bit of a shock, and although not super hot (maybe about 30 degrees) it was still a bit of a change from Melbourne at the moment.

all biznis

watch out!

awwww…. cute

While out and about I noticed a bit of street art which was quite cool I was most enamoured with the pelicans I saw all over the city. This little bear was pretty cute too.

These 5 days of conference went by in a blur. It was a flurry of work and presentations and work and research discussions and work and coffee and work. But it was a joy to be so focused on research for that time. The group made it a great experience and I felt vry privileged to be part of it.

hanging out in the royal palace

Wednesday night arrived and it was time for the conference to come to an end with the dinner. It was held in the Royal Palace in Cathedral Square. The palace was pretty much destroyed during the Russian occupation in the 18th century and went to ruin. In 2000, the government decided to rebuild and recreate it as a museum, and we were fortunate to get a guided tour before our dinner. They have done an amazing job, with the palace doubling as a monument to what once stood and also a great museum of Lithuanian historical artefacts.

mmm… dinner

I normally loathe conference dinners. I’m not one for the formalities of them and more often than not it is quite a bit of work. This was different though. First of all, since the working group was coming to a close we saw it as a fun way to cap it all off. But also, the dinner proved to be one of the best I had experienced.

this is the serious part of the song

What I loved is that the conference organisers seemed to just get it all spot on. We had our guided palace tour, then settled in for entrees. After that we got to enjoy some quite dramatic opera performance (he took it very seriously at times!) and then alternated between courses and opera. It was super well paced to have some food, some music, and some time to chat on our table.

It then all capped off with less formal dessert and drinks where we could all mingle together, enjoying local beers and spirits. Everyone who made it to the end of the conference was in high spirits. Some were keen to kick on, although I called it stumps at about midnight. I found out the next day that 3am was quits time for some of my working group colleagues. Good work team!

Thursday arrived, which was my one and only day to really explore the city in earnest. I had the good fortune to be able to spend it with Jane from the University of Warwick, whom I had also worked closely with last year. We didn’t have a plan except to wander the old town and soak it all in.

frank zappa looks proudly over vilinus…

Well, I did actually have one thing on my list. Frank Zappa. As I was leaving work last week, one of our PhD students said “make sure you visit the Frank Zappa statue!”. Huh?! I had no idea! Kate also knew of it. Weird! I had never heard of it, and in doing some reading could never really find out why it was there. But I had to see it.

… and zappa looks out over me

So in a non-descript parking lot of sorts, there was Zappa’s head on a plinth. I have to say it looked pretty rad, definitely looked like the man himself.

the uzupis republic

the angel looks over her republic

The rest of the day was just wandering old town. We also head into the Uzupis Republic, which is a small part of the city that declared themselves as a breakaway state. Cool! Today it has artists residing, and apparently even has its own currency that you can use once a year. The Angel of Uzupis looks over their tiny community.

words to live by

They also have their own constitution, which they display proudly. “Do Not Defeat”, “Do Not Fight Back”, “Do Not Surrender”. Nice.

the sad mermaid

In this area, there also lives a mermaid in the wall, overlooking the river. Sadly, I don’t know her whole story, so it might be worth finding out.

With this, my day, and my week, in Vilnius was fast coming to a close. Jane and I shared some dinner and more research discussion, making plans for our next work. This conference was so valuable for continuing my work from last year with Jane, Paivi from Finland, and all the others I met and worked with. Even though it was hectic and a long way to come it was very worth it. Now to keep the hard work going…

So that’s it! Just on a week, and what a hectic one it was. Nothing else by airline food, movies and hopefully some sleep here and there. Oh, and the odd view like this out my plane window…

flying high

See you all soon!

May

A Wedding Gift From Canada

By: muttler

antarctica

travel

I’m a Pirate!

Hi everyone!

Here is a post for you all a bit out of left field, and quite a few months since I last wrote. When I left you, Kate and I had returned from Antarctica with a crazy amount of stories of penguins and seals and ice and swims and whales and kayaking and things that you only dream about. A massive part of our experience was thanks to G Adventures and the amazing crew of the MS Expedition and how much they looked after us and helped us have such an incredible time. I thought it was appropriate to write a short epilogue to let you know a little bit more about G Adventures and how they have helped make it the best honeymoon ever.

The MS Expedition, our ship that we travelled on, had two flags flying proudly during the trip. One, the ships flag, and the other a G Adventures pirate flag that Kate and I both fell in love with. Instantly we thought something like that would be an awesome memento of our trip, but put it to the back of our minds as we headed south. It was towards the end of our journey that an out of the blue opportunity to get our hands on said pirate flag emerged. During a charity auction on the boat, the pirate flag was up for grabs! We were super excited and bid hard with gusto, deciding it was meant to be. Sadly, we were continually being outbid by another passenger, and when the price went quite a bit beyond what we really wanted to pay, we called it quits. A bit of asking about the crew to try and source another flag came up empty handed. Alas, it seemed it wasn’t meant to be after all.

On our return home, I decided to drop G Adventures a quick message, just to see if there was a chance of getting my hands on a flag. It was going to be a long shot, but I thought, hey why not give it a crack. So I sent a message through their website, telling my story of our trip and honeymoon, and hoping that it would get through to someone who may be able to help. But you know how it is… web contact forms don’t typically fill one with confidence.

Lo and behold, a day or so later I got an email from Lyndon from G. What was I thinking when I sent my message? Of course, being G Adventures, I should have expected a reply and something amazing, and that is what I got. Lyndon loved my story and instantly sent me a photo of the EXACT right pirate flag, letting me know that he would be more than happy to send one my way. And not only that, some t-shirts for both Kate and I would be in the package as well. The email was classic G Adventures… funny, caring, and eager to help all at once. Lyndon got our tee sizes and popped his generous gift into the mail.

With both Valentine’s Day and Kate’s birthday only a few weeks away, I was looking forward to the big surprise. I was going to score major brownie points!

Unfortunately it didn’t arrive my mid-Feb. Or March. Or April. Oh man… the package had gone missing. I kept Lyndon up to date and all the time he offered to resend another one whenever I thought it was officially lost. Then, one day a week or so ago, about 3.5 months later, I get a call from Kate, who had ducked home to see our new puppy at lunch time. I couldn’t quite follow what she was saying, but she seemed a bit overwhelmed. What I got out of her was that a package from G Adventures had arrived for me, and that on the declaration it said it contained a flag. She couldn’t help but open it! And she was blown away by the surprises that were inside…

We are now officially G Adventures Pirates

Inside was 4 tees and the best honeymoon memento we could imagine… our very own G Adventures Pirate Flag. Needless to say it is going to take pride of place in our house. We are now officially G Adventures pirates!

So apologies everyone if this reads like a bit of an advertisement, but Kate and I have had nothing but the best times with G Adventures, and this bit of customer service just exemplifies them for us. It might be a relatively little thing, but to us it meant a lot, and means that our already perfect honeymoon became even more so. Thanks Lyndon and everyone at G for your generosity and contributing to yet another amazing travel memory. See you all again soon 🙂

Jan

The Map of Our Antarctic Adventure

By: muttler

antarctica

travel

Our Expedition

Hi Everyone.

One last post! A few people have reminded me that I said I would post a map of where we went in Antarctica. Here it is! We got it in a bundle of documents from G Adventures a week or so after the trip. They are awesome, as the docs give us all the exact details of where we went, what we did, latitudes and longitudes, water temperatures when I swam (minus 1.1 degrees celcius!)… everything we would want to know.

So here you go. Hope everything makes a bit more sense now!

muttler.net

it's matt butler... in website form

All posts by muttler

The Great Great Showdown Hunt

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (with respect to Murakami-san)

A Week In Vilnius

A Wedding Gift From Canada

The Map of Our Antarctic Adventure