Hike Pike.

I had planned to go on a big hike to Govett's Leap in the Blue Mountains on the weekend. But Cityrail decided it should take 6 hours to do a return journey from North Sydney. Bollocks to that.

Instead I spent most of the weekend helping out Emja doing her thing as the star employee of a volunteer organisation. To avoid googleisation, her employer will remain nameless, but she works for an organisatin that sends young Australians to get tanned, muscly and happy in an exotic third world country for 6-10 weeks. Oh, they also build things like community halls and help with eye surgery, but that's by the by.

I went to Costa Rica with them in 2003. That's where I met her actually. We did stuff like this:

And built stuff like this:

Anyway, Saturday was spent helping Em get the next lot of kids ready for their trip to Costa Rica. They don't know what they're in for!

On Stady night we went to Manly Wharf for a couple of sneaky ones. The northern beaches boys do a pub crawl every Christmas dressed in Santa suits. They start at the Newport Arms and work their way down through Collaroy, Dee Why, Brookvale to Manly. We were fortunate enough to run into them at the Manly end, where they were beyond sauced. The grillas at the doors wouldn't let them in, and were subjected to a very vocal rendition of 'You've lost that loving feeling'.

On Sunday Emja had to get up and do it all over again with another group of young'uns. This time I just helped out for an hour or so. Em needs a rest. so next weekend I am taking her here. Should be fun.

Sydney FC won on the weekend. The one real white boy on the team scored the winner, so I am well pleased.