Do you want the backpacker to...?

Last week I replied to an ad on the gumtree - somebody was looking for a hand to stain a fence.  No email response, but the next day I get a text message: "are you available tomorrow?  I need some help moving furniture for a couple hours."  What the hell I figure; nothing else going on today.

I show up at the woman's house.  She wrangled another guy from Germany to help out as well.  We spent about an hour moving a piano, chairs, shelves, tables, mattresses, and a bunch of trinkety stuff from one room to the other.  Kind of strange, but not a big deal...  When we finished, she called up her husband: "do you want the backpacker to do that?  Should I send him to pick up the...?"  Yeah, I am the the backpacker.  Anyway, she gives me instructions, a couple phone numbers and says "see ya later".  I drove off to some jobsite to pick up a ute (if you have been following, a ute is a truck) from some guy I've never met.  He hands me the key and I head off with a non-functioning humidifier to a shop 2 hours away.  Keep in mind that I've just met this woman and all she asked me was: "can you drive? have you driven a ute?  have you pulled a trailer?"  Yes I answered to all of the above.  "Are you interested in working the rest of the day?"  Sure, of course.

So there I was, in a new work truck driving on the wrong side of the road, in a huge city with asshole honking drivers, on my way to a couple destinations hours away.  I guess this woman trusted the "backpacker" to not steal or wreck her nice vehicle and actually return it!

After several wrong turns and the guidance of our mobile hotspot and the netbook, I managed to reach both destinations unscathed.  I dropped off the humidifier, picked up the "calf crush" (they have llamas), and then met her husband at his office in another suburb.  I said "hello and nice to meet you", but he hardly said anything, swapped me the ute keys for his car, and told me how to get back to Bondi Junction.  I returned with her husbands car and she paid me a days wages.  I was quite happy for the adventure, but am blown away that she just sent me off like that!  The whole situation was quite comical to me, but it was fun.

The contact produced more work yesterday.  I spent all morning working at the woman's house cleaning sidewalks, sealing tiles, and repairing some sheetrock damage in the garage.  She did use my name this time though - I wasn't just the "backpacker."



This past weekend was amazing.  We (Nick, Amy, Tim, and Liz) traveled to the Hunter Valley.  "The Hunter" is a huge wine producing valley known for their Semillion and Shiraz grapes.  Tim found us a quaint little guest house in the sticks of Quorrobolong, just south of the wine country.  It was a really nice place with a great deck, bbq, fire pit, Wii, Playstation, kitchen, citrus orchard, kangaroos, and a nature loo.  Saturday was overcast and it spit a bit of rain, but we managed to hit up several wineries.

It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed learning about the production of the different styles and grapes.  It is fascinating!  I thought brewing was a lot of fun, but I think I could be drawn into a new craft!  When you go to the wineries (this was my first real experience) one of the staff sets you up to try their wines.  They have a list that starts with whites (Semillion and Chardonnay) then moves to the reds (Shiraz).  Many also have a few bubbly varieties, which I enjoyed very much.  The server pours you about 20 ml tastes of each wine you want to try.  You do a bit of a swirl, sniff, and roll it onto the tongue.  Often the server tells you what tastes to be detecting and what foods pair well with what you are drinking.  By the end of the day, our pallets were pretty much worn out and picking out the fine flavours of a certain grape was, well, even more challenging.  We stopped into about 6 wineries throughout the day and usually ended up liking something so much, we bought a bottle or two, or 5.  The car had little room to begin with and on Sunday, we rattled our way home with bottles between our legs.  It was a great time and we will be enjoying excellent wine for months to come.  We are now proud members of the Hunter Valley Wine Society...very classy.

We need to get some pics uploaded, but it is getting late and I am worn out.  I'll post a few now and get some more recent shots up soon.  It gets dark here around 6pm now.  We are looking forward to the longer days and warmer weather.  I haven't been to the beach in a while - kinda sad considering it is just down the road. 

Until next time, be safe everybody.