Summertime Baseball & Less is More, Unless Referring to Dumbbells

Sydney, NSW – 4 January at 7:20pm
Kansas City, USA - January 4 at 2:20am

It’s 7:20pm and the Knights baseball practice is just getting ready to start. It’s a cool, overcast evening and the boys are starting to take the field to warm up. As I stated in a previous post, Jason is a baseball nut. His love for the sport stretches across the high seas to the Kansas City Royals but it all starts here in Australia. He coaches a couple different teams and plays on one also. Sports over here are much different than they are in the states…as in “regular” people play them much longer into their adult life for recreation instead of finishing after high school or college.

Anywho, tonight (and every Tuesday) is the Knights Club practice (they are in the New South Wales Major League), which means all the grades practice together instead of just their individual teams. Grade 1 has the best players, Grade 2 is the next best players, Grade 3 has the next and then there is an under 18 team. It sounds similar to minor league ball but these guys don’t get paid (it’s still very confusing and I heard it first hand).  Jason is the head coach of the under 18 team so he helps organize this practice plus the under 18 individual practices and games. He does something related to baseball at least 5 nights a week…I’ve finally realized why this guy is single.

TIME OUT…a foul ball over the backstop just nailed the boot (aka trunk) of a car…a car that happened to be owned by one of the coaches…all clear, no damage… but the guy who hit it is getting razzed a little…kind of a funny moment if you were here.

So, here I sit watching them warm up, do their drills, write this blog and get eaten alive by the darn mosquitoes…I swear, the one day I forget to put on my perfume of insect repellant we go to a baseball field in the bush. UGH.

Since it is summer over here, they are in the middle of their season. They had a four week break for Christmas (I would think that would either make or break a season…wow, four weeks of not playing…rough) and this is their first practice back on the field so Jason is very excited.

I digress.

So today was the first day since I have been in Australia that I was by myself. When I planned this little adventure I anticipated spending a ton of time by myself but that hasn’t happened...which is good...it’s been great to have such wonderful hosts but it was also kind of nice to have a day just for me. I didn’t do much out of the ordinary… I slept in until 9am, made some toast and tea, caught up on emails, finalized the details for my trips to New Zealand & Tasmania (woo hoo!), did the dishes, took out the trash and worked out to my Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred DVD that my dear, dear IT friend Jason (not this Jason…Jason back in the states) set up for me on my computer so I didn’t need to bring the disk…thank you Jason (again, because of all these wonderful people in my life, my trip has been simplified).

Side note: I definitely recommend this video to anyone who’s New Year resolution is to get in shape…it’s an awesome workout…very challenging and it has 3 levels.

Since traveling with weights would be stupid, here is what I found in Jason’s pantry for dumbbells.

Tah Dah!!!!
 

Ok, so there not heavy but they provide a little something to help with movement control.

After the workout and a shower I got to Skype with a few friends. Skype has really made communicating with friends and family very easy and VERY inexpensive…FREE 99 as my friend Jermaine would say. For instance, last night I got to see and talk with Matthew while he was sitting in the parking lot of a Hen House in Overland Park before he went grocery shopping…it’s really pretty amazing if you think about it.

So after catching up with everyone I took off on foot (even though Jason gave me the keys to his car - again, who does that? He is too nice to me) and headed to Target to get a few things for my upcoming boat excursion. Target is located in their shopping center (i.e. Mall) which I think is about 5 stories high. It has a movie theater, Coles (grocery store), Target, and a ton of ‘mall type’ stores. So I walked around just to have a look…then I realized…I have to exit out the exact same door I came in otherwise I will have no idea how to get back to Jason’s (this place is HUGE). I had written down the street names on a little cheat sheet but I didn’t have a map of the area. So if I were to exit out a different side of the building I would have no idea what street would take me back to the street where I came from. I’m great with maps (must be the name) but I’m terrible with general directions (i.e. N,S,E,W) unless I look at the sun and today happened to be cloudy. By this time it was 5:30pm and I noticed all the stores were starting to close…then a voice came over the loud speaker to say that the registers were closing and patrons needed to check out. I had been all over this place so I was in a little bit of a panic to remember which floor I came in on and what actual door I needed to exit out of to make it back in time to go with Jason to practice. Usually I’m good about pay attention to my surroundings but I got lazy. Anyway, that was kind of a boring story BUT I made it back and practice is about over.  The End … of another great day in Sydney.

Tomorrow I’m off to Bondi to meet up with an American named Lisa who is a friend of a girl who I use to work with at Sprint Center…I haven’t met Lisa yet (except through email) but she seems like a great person. We are scheduled to go for a hike and then to the beach for a picnic…should be another fun day!