Day 327! Time for another very nice day in this very nice town. I didn’t end up surfing today, but I did make it to the beach and did a lot of reading. I also had a fun night of work that ran fairly late and rounded it off with some games of pool with my coworkers!

Well… I was supposed to be going surfing with my friend Will this morning. But as we’ve seen… he has a tendency to sleep in. And after how late we stayed up last night, I don’t blame him.

I woke up at 8:30am expecting to head out to the beach around 9am to surf. But I got a text from Will saying he needed a bit more sleep and he’d be game to go at 10am. That seemed reasonable enough, so I worked on my blog post from the day before as I waited.

Butttt, 10am drew closer and closer and I heard nothing from Will. Turns out, he did sleep in again and was very apologetic. But to be honest, as much as I wanted to go surfing this morning… I was equally as happy with lying in bed.

I got a knock on my door and it turned out my roommate had just been handed a package for me. Inside it was my new surfboard rack for my bike!

So instead of going to the beach to surf, I spent the next 30 minutes taking off the old and setting up the new rack.

This rack should work so much better! Even though it unfortunately didn’t come with its own inbuilt bungee cords, it will make my surfboard more stable. The other rack was definitely meant for a smaller board, but with this one having two separate holders, the board won’t be able to wiggle as much!

I’m looking forward to testing it out tomorrow!

I finished up and headed back inside to make myself a late breakfast.

After eating, I headed straight for the beach! The day was far too nice to be spent sitting in bed and reading. So I packed up my book and my other beach items and headed up and down the hill to Yamba Main Beach.

The sun was out, the tourists were enjoying the beach, and even the surf patrol was out making sure everyone in the ocean was safe and in the right areas.

I spent the next two hours devouring more of the book I’m reading and enjoying the amazing weather. I thankfully found a shady spot so I was able to stay out for much longer than if I had been directly in the sun.

After a couple hours, I decided to head back home to shower, eat lunch, and relax a bit before my work shift at 4pm.

After breakfast, I had a bit more time to kill. So for the next hour, I read more of my book. I’m under 100 pages away from finishing it and I’m on the edge of my seat! I’m sure there’ll be plenty of cliff hangers, but it’s been ramping up like crazy!

But as always, I had to pry myself away and head up the hill for work!

My shift started at 4pm, today was a busy-ish night. It wasn’t as crazy as it could be, but it also wasn’t completely dead. I served my fair share of drinks and chatted a fair amount about being American, how long I’ve been in Australia, etc.

At 8pm I took my break and had another chicken schnitzel.

This is seriously one of my favorite things on the menu.

After dinner, I sat with a couple of friends who were at the bar. We made plans for tomorrow to go to the beach early in the morning (Will included)… so hopefully they stick this time! If not, I’ll be going and surfing either way.

I got back to work and ended up working all the way till close! We closed around 10:20pm and wrapped up just before 11pm.

To round out the night, myself and my two coworkers played a few games of pool and enjoyed our knock off beer. After we finished playing pool, I walked through the quiet streets back to my house.

Today was a good mix of relaxing and work. I’m excited to finish up this book I’m reading and then dive into the second Dune book… and then hop back to the Way of Kings books. But now it’s time for sleep so I can get up nice and early to surf!

– Elie