Day 318! WOO! I’m finally on the right steps to becoming a surfer. Now that I’ve got my hands on a board, the ocean is my oyster! And once I have my lessons next week I’ll be even more prepared for surfing. But today, I had a double work shift and of course, it ran longer than scheduled. Oh and I also got a new celebrity look alike today… the lead singer of the Thin Lizzy band.

I woke up this morning nice and early. The guy I was buying my new, used, surfboard from was going to swing by and drop it off. So at 8am he told me he was on his way… and soon after, the deal was made!

The cover is a bit of a hassle to put back on, so you’ll have to wait for a surfboard reveal. BUT, I now am the owner of a 9ft long surfboard that will allow me to catch waves and sit on top of the world. I’m pretty dang stoked!

After storing the board, I showered and made myself breakfast.

I definitely need to find the time to get to the grocery store soon. I’m out of a lot of things, but with work, I’ll probably have to wait till Sunday or Monday.

My shift this morning started at 10am… and it was a SLOW one. Of course the beginning of the morning was super slow, because the bar opens at 10am. But even the lunch “rush” was slow. The most interesting part of my morning was helping the keg delivery guy by opening the shed for him.

At around 1pm, my manager came in and asked for my assistance. He needed to count the kegs I helped bring in and wanted my “young eyes” to help him out. It also ended up turning into moving 18 kegs around a hot and dusty storage shed. But, at least it was something to do and a good workout.

2pm rolled around and it was time to head home for my couple hour break.

I made myself tuna wraps, caught up on texts, watched an episode of Bleach, and then read a bunch of the 2nd Way of Kings. I’m thoroughly enjoying, but it’s not going down as quickly as the first one did… I do have less time in the day to be reading I guess too.

4pm rolled around and it was time to put my work clothes back on and head back up the hill.

The shift started on the slower side, but I knew it was going to pick up. I was told this morning that 3 groups of 25 were going to be coming in at some point tonight… and once they did, the show got rolling. For a Friday night though, I’d say it was still fairly slow, I heard that from now till Christmas time it’ll be like this but then after Christmas is when the fun begins.

It still got fairly busy and I was, at times, nonstop serving drinks. At one point, a guy asked me to help me carry his drinks with him and he ended up tipping me $10… not bad!

I took a break just before 9pm and had dinner.

I had a wonderful chicken schnitzel, which is so far my favorite meal at the hotel. But originally my shift was going to end at 9pm, and as always, my hopes of staying on later panned out!

I stayed on for an extra 2 hours, which was a blast. I originally was told to leave at 10pm, but one of my other coworkers wanted to leave, so they let him leave and I got to stick around. This was super nice because not only did I get more hours, I got another $10 tip from a lady for just making their drinks! She told me to turn my hat backwards… but I’d gladly do that for $10!

Randomly in the night, one of the patrons I was serving, a very gorgeous one I might add, introduced herself and… gave me a hug. I should’ve become a bartender sooner! Jokes aside, being a bartender has been a great way to meet people and make connections, surface level and deeper. It’s a pretty cool job in that regard!

But as the summer progresses, I’m sure I’m going to be meeting a lot of very nice people… who knows who I’ll meet!

I ended the night at 11pm and clocked off. My manager gave me a crisp high five and told me I did a great job today. Not a bad feeling! Hopefully that means he’ll continue to let me work later than he planned.

I had a Stone and Wood Radler as my knock off beer. It’s interesting, this is allegedly one of Australia’s first radlers… but in the US we have a ton of them! There’s a fairly big stigma that a fruity beer isn’t a “real beer.” But Stone and Wood is trying to prove otherwise… I think it’s a great beer, but we’ll see if it sells well at the bar or not.

While enjoying my beer I sat with my friend Will and some of his friends. After he got off of work at the tavern, he came by the hotel.

We have plans to go to the beach very early tomorrow morning and potentially try and surf! The only problem… which I realized while taking a shower after work… is that I don’t have surfboard wax. Which is very crucial to surfing and being able to grip the board and not slip off.

If Will’s roommate has some, we’ll be good to go. But if not, we may just be swimming tomorrow!

We’ll also see if Will even gets up!

– Elie