Figjam's Epic Adventure 'The Second Coming': November 2010

10/11/10

1504 (local time)

Bloody hell its cold!!! That’s right, im no longer in the sunny shores of Dahab, Egypt, if flown north west, to the cloudy, damp and cold island of London, England!

Now before I start rattling on about London and my plans I firstly want to recap and talk about the amazing time I had in Dahab!

Like you may already know, I started out in Dahab on the 12^th of April! And eventually my contract finished on the 8^th.

Throughout this time, I almost spent every single day in the water, if that was swimming, snorkelling, free diving or windsurfing, you couldn’t keep me out of the liquid!

I can definitely say that this summer was the best summer (or winter in Aus) I had ever had in my life! It was just non-stop party. What makes the place so special is that, there are so many different things you can do and try. For example, if there is no wind, go snorkelling if you don’t like doing that, go down the road into town and hire a 250cc motorbike for the after noon and razz it around in the desert.

If you had to ask me, what my favourite memory about Dahab was, I would have to say it was my 22^nd birthday, unfortunately I don’t remember all that much from it mostly due to the 22 shots I had to finish off. But from the parts I do remember it was all just dancing and seeing all my friends at the party left me with a super warm feeling, it was just a pity all my mates and family from back home weren’t there to celebrate it with me.

All in all, most Saturday night parties were an absolute ball. Pretty sure I cana-brava’d and danced most girls (and blokes) that came to Dahab. Even parties where the guests weren’t all that much fun, it was just great to be around your friends.

My day off’s with John Palmer for most of the year were on a Thursday, normally it was windy so we would just spend hours and hours out on the water, if it wasn’t windy myself and Palmer would just chill out with anyone else that had a day off on Thursday, if it was Marco from Harry Nass, or James and Sam from Neilson. Anyway the time eventually came for Palmer to leave as manager, and next time I looked there was no longer any ‘old’ staff, instead all the summer guys, were replaced with the winter staff. Now for the first couple of weeks, it was quite hard working with new staff, because generally the guys didn’t know what was going on, but after 3 – 4 weeks we had a rhythm. A new team was back in action.

I was now sharing a room with Luke (the Cone) Baillie, who was sick of his day job as a painter decorator so he packed up and arrived at the steaming head of Dahab. Luke had done a fair bit of travelling to Australia but mostly if not all to the West coast to ride the epic waves of Geraldton, Margies and the rest.

Luke and I now shared a day off on Sunday... Now Sunday Day-Off’s can go one of two ways, you would either be ridiculously hung-over or just moderately, either way you were going to be feeling under the weather. If there was wind, we would attempt to rip it up windsurfing wise, if not we would probably just lay in bed for a while, watch a movie, chat to mates, or if we had the energy boot up the X-Box 360 and play each other on FIFA.

When it hit about Midday we would eventually summon up the energy to head into town for a greasy hamburger and the heavenly Chocolate-Banana Milkshake at Funny Mummy’s or Shams. Once we were fuelled up, we would wander down the street to the local games room, say G’Day to the cute chick (but an outrageous accent) from Liverpool. We would spot ourselves a Table-Tennis table and fully session table tennis. The embarrassing thing is, that Luke is a very solid tennis player and also not a bad Table Tennis player, but he clearly underestimated the gifted ‘Flack’ family name, with just a natural talent to be good at pretty much everything!

But honestly we had some good rallies, but it was the unbelievable strength of my right arm that often let me down, as I was generally smashing balls off the table. Good fun though.

Another member of the team I haven’t mentioned yet was our team dog Mutley! This dog rocked up on our beach on a Wednesday, with a very broken hip, and a tail that was way to short to have been professionally docked, no one had any idea who’s or what it was doing here!

It wasn’t until a German guest named Patrick took the dog under his wing, fed it, took it to the vets to get a check up, the Vet said that ‘the dog’s hip was broken a long time ago, and has now fused back together in completely the wrong spot’ so the vet didn’t do really anything to help the dog, apart from clean it and get rid of the ticks... oh I forgot to mention that the Vet chopped the dogs nuts off... So Patrick the friendly German, took this helpless dog to get it treated for, but instead he just got the dogs nuts chopped off, quite amusing really!

Anyway, so when Patrick left, he left us in charge of the dog, so we took it on board as our Team Dog! I ended up growing very fond of this dog, it was fantastic seeing Mutley come from a very broken fragile state that just slept all the time, to being this very, very energetic puppy that wanted to play all the time! It was a really nice transition! I think the dog and I bonded, and it ended just following me around on the beach, to when we took it home. I also pulled a few nasty huge ticks off the dogs back, that I’m sure wasn’t all that pleasurable!

Right, before my departure to the friendly country of England I had the pleasure of seeing my cousins! Scott, Jenna and Matt came down to Dahab to predominantly do some diving but they also made some time to drop in and see me whilst I was at work! It was a bit tricky, as I couldn’t hang out with them all the time due to my work, but I did have an absolute ball with them.

Scott arrived first, as he wasn’t doing the trip around Egypt, on one of my days off where I was extremely hung over Scott took me diving off Blue Beach Hotel. I don’t mind snorkelling, but generally it gets pretty boring seeing the same fish, but where I went with Scott it was unbelievable, FISH EVERYWHERE! And big ones as well! I had a ball, Scott went down in a wetsuit whilst I went down in boardies, we lasted until about 2 hours, when I eventually got to cold and had to get out! It was fantastic, defiantly the best bit of snorkelling I have done in my life!

When I had the time, I was chatting to Matt and Jenna about their plans for the next journey of their trip, and it sounds fantastic, and they offered me to join them if my winter season job doesn’t work out. They are going to have an absolute ball, but it did make me think about our family Christmas, their will be no one there!!!

So the weeks went by, and the date for me to leave was very much creeping up on me, it wasn’t until the Sunday I was going to leave that I thought that I was really going to miss the place, but to be fair; I was more than ready to leave.

The windsurfing was more than amazing, tricks-wise I came over here just learning how to spock, but I came away with variations of spocks, flaka’s, grubbies and forwards, I was slightly upset that I didn’t get any switch, but I was definitely getting close to landing punetas. Alright, so that’s enough chat for all you guys that don’t windsurf.

I think you all may be Dahab’d out by now, so I’m going to talk a little about my plans as of the 10^th of November.

So at the moment, I have an interview with a luxurious snow company called Powder Bryne on Thursday, so I’m going to do some study tonight and tomorrow about that so I have the best possible chance to get a job with them. If the interview doesn’t go so well, then I’m kind of farked...

If things don’t go to plan, I might do a bit of travelling around Europe, or keep persisting with Winter Companies about jobs for the winter. If I’m desperate, I might just fly over to France or Switzerland and just be there to find some work! Who knows, I’ve never done this kind of thing before and it doesn’t really help that I’ve never seen the snow! But they don’t have to know that?

After the interview, it will be just a big catch up, ill probably find myself up in Leeds, hanging out with John Palmer and from there... Who knows? Maybe Ireland!

So on that note

I will end it here!

Good chat dudes and dudettes!

Steve xx