Katie's Australian Blind Date

A couple of weeks ago Katie took me on a blind date. She already wrote about it in this post. But needless to say it was quite fun. So the pressure was kind of on to come up with a quality blind date for her since she is always so good at coming up with good ones for me. I started thinking off and on about different ideas until finally I came across this really good option while browsing Groupon. So here is said blind date.

We set off around 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 20th after a bit of a delay due to my last minute planning and note taking. Turns out the location wasn't quite where I thought it was, so I had to do some last minute research. But I think it helped add to the mystery of the date. I also learned that what we'd be doing was actually outside, not inside like I originally thought. Luckily we had still had some warm weather, but it was turning cold that night. *Phew*

Katie experiencing the non-sights and sounds of public transit.
She didn't have to wear the blindfold for long, as Katie talked about in her post, it is a bit too sketchy to lead someone around blindfolded in a busy city. Plus the stops are announced over the intercom, so there's no point.

After about an hour of travel on two trains and a tram, we arrived at our first destination: Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Center.
At this point she was guessing that we were doing some kind of swimming, but there was still more to the surprise.

The surprise is revealed. We're surfing!.. well fake surfing. They call it flowriding.

Yup, that's right. I found a sweet groupon deal for this surfing machine. All day passes for two people for only $35. And that includes entry to the other aquatic center stuff like an indoor wave pool. It's something I've always wanted to try, but when I've seen them at other water parks they were always so busy and cost extra. So as we often do for blind dates, I found something I really wanted to do and dragged Katie along with me. I think it worked out. We both had a lot of fun. 

You first start out on a bodyboard. And then from there you work your way up getting on your knees on the bodyboard.

Katie bodyboarding.

Me bodyboarding.

Katie picked it up quite quickly.
Her second or third time she was already getting up on her knees.

I picked it up pretty easily as well.

Our instructor was awesome. He was really interactive, joked with us a lot, and was just overall a lot of fun. But as a result he pushed us pretty quickly into the real deal surfing. They do a really good job of easing you into it. 

For our first few times we start out on the front of the "wave" and our instructor helps ease us into the flowing water.

We then get a chance to figure out how to balance and turn on the flowing water while holding onto a rope. It felt a lot like wakeboarding at this point

Once you get that down you're moved to the top and taught how to drop into the wave.

Me being helped my first time down into the wave

https://youtu.be/fjp6HFwuDIM
Here's a video of me dropping in semi-successfully.

We then took about an hour break. The flowrider was reserved for an hour by a private party. We were a little bit bummed, but it worked in our favor to take a bit of a break. And as a perk we got to go into the water park area and enjoy the wave pool and eat a snack.

Chilling by the wave pool.

After our break we got right back out on the waves and practiced some more. It took a bit to warm up again. We both had some nasty falls. But eventually we managed to have some pretty good rides too. It helped that the lines were short and the other guys that were there were a lot of fun to be around. Everyone would cheer you on if you were having a good ride. If you fell down early a couple of the guys had some hilariously awesome phrases they'd yell at you to get you to take another turn (imagine all of these in a heavy Australian accent): "Have another go, mate! Have another go!" and "Come on now, step in time... step in time!" (Gotta love the Mary Poppins reference).

Katie tearing it up!

Hang Ten Mate!

https://youtu.be/wFStFJjRoRA
One of Katie's best rides. 
She even had a pretty graceful dismount at the end there.

https://youtu.be/lYY1FAlwik0
 One of my best rides.
Notice the stirring motion my arms are making to keep balance. The guys would yell out "And he's stirring the pot! That he is... stir that pot". It was quite funny at the time.

We ended up being there way longer then I thought we'd be. It helped that we both exceeded our own expectations of how good we would do. Katie didn't think she would even try the stand-up surfing. But as you can probably tell from the pictures and videos, she did awesome! Success!

At this point we were pretty tired. I had looked up a few other things we could have done in the city, but given the time and our energy level we decided it best to head back home. But I had one more surprise. On our train ride home we stopped a few stops early in Yarraville. Katie was a bit confused at first, but then she quickly figured out what we were doing. I still tried my best to keep it a secret.

Even though she more or less knew where we were going, I still blindfolded her for good measure.

It's a Katie-moose.
Seemed like a must take picture. I wish I had found a box for her to stand in.

Mad Moose is a pizza joint we found while exploring Yarraville a couple of weeks before. They looked like they had some really interesting and tasty options. So I stole the idea from our to-do list for this blind date. It was really tough to decide what to get because there were so many good options. But we ended up with this:

Our Pizza!
We got a pizza with half Oasis and half Plucka.

Oasis: Garlic, napoli sauce, tasty cheese, Spanish onions, roasted red capsicum, green capsicum, diced tomato, falafel and a sprinkle of chilli. topped with tzatziki

Plucka: Plum sauce, tasty cheese, peking duck breast, topped with cucumber, carrot and coriander.

Katie approves!

Both types of pizza were amazing. We ate it all in one sitting. So it was well worth the stop even with being exhausted from our earlier activities. It was a good way to end Katie's Australian blind date.

And that was that. I hope you enjoyed my retelling of one of our last Australian adventures of the month.

Cheers!

p.s. We definitely paid for some of our falls the next day. Both of us had some pretty sore necks and shoulders. But due to lack of time and a previous commitment with another house mate, we still went rock climbing one last time. It wasn't our best performance, but at least we didn't make it too much worse.