Day 317! Today was a nice well rounded day. I finally was able to kickstart my day with a trip to the beach, I went to a new one! I then had a fairly short and slow work shift followed by the rest of the day relaxing at home… oh, and I found an actual functioning surfboard to use!!

I set my alarm for 8am this morning… I didn’t have work till noon and I had plans to go to the freaking beach! The sun was out, it was clear skies, and no rain was stopping me today.

My friend Will said he’d pick me up at 10am… but I didn’t want to wait till then. So I ate breakfast and got ready to head out.

I was out the door by 9am and heading up the steep hill to a new beach, where I was supposedly meeting Will. This beach’s called Covent Beach and it’s tucked away in between the south side of Yamba Main Beach and the north side of Pippi Beach.

This beach was nice and secluded and only a little over a 10 minute walk from my place. Unfortunately, the tide was pretty far in only a couple hours before. So there wasn’t really any dry sand to set up on. But there were a ton of of rocks so I used that as my little area.

I immediately got into the water and had some nice small waves that were perfect for body surfing. Soon I’ll be doing the real deal!!

There were a few other families there but I could see this being a beach you could easily get all to yourself. Main beach is always busy, but I think this one was a lot prettier! The water was a lot less disturbed because of how much deeper into the cove it was. So the visibility was super clear! I saw a number of fish swimming about.

There was even a dad pulling his child on a boogie board. This gave me very nice memories of my time growing up and going to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina every summer. My dad used to do the same thing… until I got too big and heavy!

… I bet I could probably do it for him now tho… might break a boogie board trying, we’ll see this summer!

Will unfortunately didn’t show up. I found out later he was up late on the phone with a friend and accidentally slept in. But we’ll find a time to hang soon hopefully!

Either way, it was an amazing way to start my day, sitting on the beach, splashing around in the ocean, and listening to my audio book (which I’m nearing the end of).

I started my walk back home and saw a bunch of car/van campers eating their breakfast in a nearby park overlooking the ocean. That’s a pretty cool lifestyle! One I definitely want to try out at some point.

I got home and had time to shower and play a bit of guitar before heading back up the hill for work.

When I arrived, it was very slow inside. Not many people were around for the lunch hour. I still served a fair amount of drinks, but it wasn’t the fast paced, hectic environment I was used to. I did have two coworkers to hang out with and we chatted a fair amount in between serving drinks and other miscellaneous tasks.

One of the guys I served ended up being my surf instructor for next week! I heard his voice and thought it might be him… then he asked me my name because he thought I might be the guy as well! It was nice to meet him in person before having a lesson from him. He’s a super friendly guy and I’m even more excited now to learn how to surf from him!

My manager showed up around 3pm (I was slotted to work till 4) and he told me to head home early. The bar wasn’t busy enough to have us all around. But, he said there was a chance he’d need me tonight. He did ask if that was okay and I of course said yes! But… spoiler alert, dinner was slow too so they didn’t need me.

But I found other things to do to occupy my time.

I made myself lunch consisting of a tuna sandwich and the same thing in wrap form. I realized after making my first round of toast that I should use my wraps and save the bread for breakfast, but oh well!

After eating, I noticed I had another little training to do (I was clued in at work that this would be the case). Since I can now work with the gambling games, I need to actually learn how to use the cash register for them. So I had an email from TAB (Totalisator Agency Board) telling me to complete a training to understand their system.

I passed the first training with flying colors. This discussed more on gambling safety, how to use the TAB systems, what TAB consists of, etc. But there was a second one which dove even deeper with how to manually input bets for people, different types of gamblers, different types of races to bet on, etc. This one was much more convoluted and had a ton more content. So I gave up on finishing it today and moved on to watching more of the TV show Bleach.

Throughout the day, I had been messaging a guy on Facebook marketplace about a longboard surfboard he had just listed. Now I know, I just got one from the hotel for free! But, as of now, it’s unusable because of the cracks in it. I thought it’d be more worthwhile to find a working one, even if it cost me some money… because fixing the broken one would take longer and cost nearly the same if not more!

But, the one I found on FB Marketplace was perfect. It was another 9’ board and all the dings were repaired. The seller was selling it for $350 but when I asked for $250 they were more than happy to! So when I got the message finally saying I could come check out the board, I hopped on my bike and raced 8 minutes across town.

Before I left though, I finally put on the surfboards rack on my bicycle. It was very easy and straight forward and I was excited to finally have a need for it!

I was a bit peeved that I was biking at night. Thankfully most of Yamba’s streets are lit up… except the one on the way to this guys part of town. But he lived in a little community of houses that were properly lit up. Also he was insanely friendly and his wife was too, which made the process a breeze.

They even had a leg rope and bag for the surfboard and it was exactly what I’ve been on the hunt for! And it’s all in tip top shape! It turns out the guy bought it in a town nearby and never got around to using it… and now they’re moving to New Zealand! So they can’t bring it with.

I tried loading it up onto my surf rack… but I guess I hadn’t tightened the legs up enough so it made it a bit hard to work with. Instead of fighting with it in the dark (and we were getting viciously attacked by mosquitoes), the guy offered to bring me the board over in the morning to my place and I’d just pay him then!! But he assured me, the board was as good as mine!

I thanked him and biked off into the night. I was glad my first time riding with a board on my bike wasn’t in the dark. I will have to get used to it though!!

I got home and made myself some rice and reheated some chicken for dinner.

After dinner, I went back to watching Bleach where I finished up the first season of the shows new arc. It’s freaking incredible!

I called it a night as I’d be getting up early to retrieve my surfboard and also head into work on the earlier side too!

– Elie